


Captivating

by RoseisaRoseisaRose



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Post-Time Skip, and one extremely fun fake engagement, annette and felix being awkward, annette's family being terrible, including some canon compliant character deaths, pretty canon compliant beyond that though, sorry rodrigue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 207,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22191688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseisaRoseisaRose/pseuds/RoseisaRoseisaRose
Summary: After failing to retrieve her house relic, Annette Dominic finds herself and her father trapped behind enemy lines as permanent guests at her uncle’s estate.  That is, until House Fraldarius makes an unexpected offer.AU where Annette fails her paralogue and Felix hatches a plan. The fake engagement Netteflix melodrama nobody asked for but (I assume) everybody wants.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 1158
Kudos: 904
Collections: Works That Will Not Leave You Alone





	1. Annette Receives An Offer

Annette was a prisoner in her own home.

She’d read about such things, of course. There were countless knightly tales that featured princesses who made homes of their prisons, be they lonely towers or towers guarded by dragons or towers at the back of imposing and dark castles.

Towers were a common theme, she realized. Her own third story bedroom was unspectacular in comparison.

Most aspects of being a prisoner in her own home were unspectacular in comparison to the stories she had read growing up. There was no evil witch that cackled as she slammed the door to the tower shut, just her uncle, who Annette had known all her life, who sighed at her at dinner when she pushed her food away and excused herself early. There was no knight coming to rescue her, just series of messengers and soldiers who brought news of the front lines of the war that she was never allowed to listen to. And there was no dark backstory, no family curse, no sinister twist of fate that had cursed Annette to a life of loneliness and isolation. No, Annette Fantine Dominic had just royally, irrevocably, undeniably fucked up.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, going to retrieve the Dominic relic. When her father had insisted he’d accompany her, Annette had considered it all to be a rather ingenious plan. A day’s journey, a quick family meal, maybe even her father and mother having a conversation? And then, relic in hand, they’d return to the monastery, laughing at old family jokes and receiving claps on the back from all the Blue Lions for their intelligence and poise.

In retrospect, she had been a bit optimistic. But even at her most dour, Annette never would have predicted that her uncle would have responded with an entire army. That he would insist that they couldn’t return to the monastery she loved so much, and that letting them leave would be an act of treason. The worst he was supposed to have said was “no.” Not, “no, and I can’t let you leave, and you live here now, and stop shooting wind spells at me when you know we outnumber you.”

She had taken out about six different knights before one of them finally knocked her over the back of the head. That was something to be proud of, at least. She’d woken up in her old bedroom several hours later, her weapons confiscated and a servant always conveniently cleaning something in the hallway outside and watching after her suspiciously if she left her quarters.

That was three weeks ago. And ever since then, Annette had been trapped at the Dominic estate.

As far as prisons went, it wasn’t so bad. There wasn’t a lock on her door. She could come and go as she pleased, as long as she stayed on the castle ground and didn’t try to stab any castle guards in an escape attempt. (They kept their distance from her after she one such incident in the first week that her uncle later attributed to “mental fatigue from intellectual overexertion.”) The meals she took with her uncle were actually extremely delicious, on days when she wasn’t pushing her food away out of anger or protest or legitimately not feeling very hungry (her rational blurred together after week 2). In a lot of ways, it felt like she was fifteen again, moved in with her uncle after her father had disappeared and aimlessly wandering the halls while she waited to hear back about her application to the School of Sorcery. The were a few key differences. One, she didn’t know where her mother was – her uncle had explained that she had “gone to stay with friends” and refused to elaborate beyond that. Secondly, she knew _exactly_ where her father was, because he was locked in a prison cell in the castle dungeon. And lastly, perhaps most significantly, she was a political hostage whose return to the rebel army fighting beneath the banner of the exiled prince would bring inevitable wrath on her house and surrounding lands.

Minor things.

Annette spent the majority of her time devising, and subsequently rejecting, escape plans. Getting out of the castle herself was easy enough, in her mind – she could tie all her bedsheets together and escape out the window, or claim she was going for a walk in the garden and then dig a tunnel underneath the hedge maze to the nearby forest, or disguise herself as a maid leaving for the market and tornado blast anyone who realized she didn’t look familiar. Annette liked all of these plans; especially the ones that involved blasting people with magic. But these plans all failed to account for her father, who sat behind sterner locks than she did, as an official traitor to the newly formed Faerghus Dukedom. Annette wasn’t entirely sure what rumor her uncle had spread to provide her relative freedom – undoubtedly some variation that she had been brainwashed, or kidnapped, or pressed into service by the evil, cruel, rebel force made up of her best friends and former classmates. Such a lie couldn’t be applied to her father, however, who had served as chief advisor to the former crown prince and firmly aligned himself with both Dimitri and the church. Annette could roam the castle grounds to its very edges, getting tantalizingly close to the freedom she so desperately craved. Gilbert was left to imagine that freedom behind several locked doors, deep underground. Every escape plan Annette devised, then, was missing the crucial requirement of breaking her father out first.

She’d actually tried it, once. Stealing a ceremonial sword off a suit of armor, Annette had snuck into the dungeons at two in the morning, holding two very surprised guards at swordpoint and demanding the cell keys. In the background, her father had shouted at her to not worry about him, to save herself. He had always been one for theatrics. But then, Annette thought, threatening the nearest guard with sparks of fiery magic from her fingertips, so had she. Annette wasn’t sure what was more horrifying – the discovery that the guards were not actually equipped with keys for high-security cells, the realization that her uncle walked the halls of the castle past midnight and had an ear for basement commotion, or the whispers of pity from the servants outside of her bedroom, that poor Miss Dominic had collapsed from grief after seeing her father in such a state, that she wouldn’t be leaving her room for the next few days, that the war had been _so hard_ on her nerves.

At any rate, that plan didn’t work. And there wasn’t much point in getting out _without_ her father. It rather ruined her grand plan to reunite her family, first of all. But more importantly, Annette wasn’t sure how she could face her army if she returned to them without a relic, without a victory, and without their beloved general. It was hard to imagine they would want just her, after all. Surely her father was a more significant loss, and returning without him would just be a reminder that it was her fault that he was gone.

Beyond devising dubiously plausible escape opportunities, there wasn’t a ton to do as a political prisoner in your own home. Sometimes she pored over books in the library about knights of old, the sorts of books Ashe and Ingrid would eagerly devour while at the academy. This was when she really began to tally the tower motif in earnest – she was up to tower number eight by week three. Annette liked the old tale of chivalry well enough, but she read mostly to track down accounts of famous spellcasters of old, trying to messily reverse-engineer their techniques in order to keep her own magical theory sharp. All the books on magic and spells had disappeared from their usual spot in the library. Gaping, empty shelves stood in their place.

Sometimes, before the escape attempt, she tried to talk to her father, and he replied in glum, monosyllabic platitudes about failure. She wouldn’t admit to being relieved when she wasn’t allowed in the dungeons anymore.

Sometimes she wrote letters to her friends back at Garreg Mach. She couldn't send them; her uncle confiscated everything she tried to send and read it first; letters to Blue Lions were destroyed on principle, even if she could figure out how to send a messenger across what would technically be considered enemy lines. So instead, unsent letters piled up on the back of her desk, neatly organized by addressee and cross-indexed by date.

_Dearest darling Mercie,_

_I hope this letter finds you well, and that the cold you from three weeks ago has subsided. It probably has. Colds don’t usually last longer than a week, except for that one time you were sick for a month at Fhirdiad, do you remember that? So that was kind of a dumb conversation opener. I wish I had more news from you that I could use instead. Have you met anyone interesting in the village recently? Have you tried that new torte recipe Dedue promised we would love? Did I already ask you that two letters ago? Do you miss me as much as I miss you? Don’t answer that last one; I don’t want you to think about it._

_Dear Felix,_

_When you said “captive,” did you mean like in a friend way? Or like in a hot way? I’m fine with either, honestly, I just want some clarification. Right now I’m thinking it was probably more of a friend way, and that’s great too! I’m very into friends right now. Starting to wish I’d realized how great they were before, you know, the whole enforced isolation thing._

_I’m sorry about your father. I know I told you that already, but I think about it a lot. I hope you’ve let someone besides me talk to you about it. Sylvain means well, you know. He’s worried about you._

_Dear Professor,_

_I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was leaving. If I’d have told you, I don’t think I would be here right now. You were busy, and I was in a hurry, and I always mess things up. I hope you aren’t worried about me; you have enough trouble worrying about the fate of Fodlan. I’ll be alright. You know me; I always make the BEST of any situation, right?_

Annette paused over the letter, where she had been about to draw a smiley face beside her attempt at a joke. Did the professor know what smiley faces were? She rarely smiled, so Annette wasn’t sure.

Annette was drawn out of her indecision by a knock on her bedroom door. She quickly stuffed the letter into an envelope and placed it on a towering stack at the back of her desk.

“One moment!” she cried hurriedly as the stack dangerously wavered from the new addition. How many letters had she written to the professor? She was going to have to find a new filing system.

Brushing her hair out of her face and smoothing her dress down, Annette walked over to the door and carefully cracked it open. A young maid who frequently was sent to check on Annette stood in the doorway, shuffling her feet.

“Yes, Lissa, is everything alright?” Annette asked her. “There’s no formal dinner I’m late for, is there?” If there was, Annette thought it was cruel to send Lissa to come to fetch her. She’d skipped dinner altogether for the last two days (when was the last time she’d eaten? she couldn’t remember if she’d had breakfast that morning), but if her uncle wanted to take that up with her, he could surely come talk to her himself. He didn’t have to send intermediaries after her to do his dirty work.

Lissa ducked her head, which Annette took to mean no. “No, miss,” she said, confirming it. “Baron Dominic requests your presence in the library.”

“My uncle?” Annette asked, although it was an obvious question. There was only one Baron Dominic. “The library?” she added, which didn’t really contribute much to the conversation, either.

Still, it was a surprising message to receive. Her uncle tended to avoid individual, formal discussions with her these past few weeks, maybe from some sense of shame, maybe from fear that she might have found another dagger to smuggle up her sleeve. His conversations with her tended to be perfunctory, and in at least semi-public spaces.

“I’ll be right there; thank you, Lissa,” Annette said, trying to smile at the young girl. It wasn’t really her fault the kingdom was at war, or that the recipient of her messages was an unwilling houseguest.

Leaving her room, Annette made her way to the library. Old, dusty portraits of her ancestors stared down at her as she walked down the empty hallways, an unvarying array of red hairstyles and formal gowns. Her footsteps echoed off the high ceilings. Her uncle had never married, and war was not a time for inviting large parties to stay in the guest chambers. The castle was emptier than Annette had ever been used to, which was really saying something. A portrait of her great-great-great-grandmother, Alma Dominic, glared at her with a look of disapproval as she walked by. Annette vaguely wondered what old Alma would have done if she were in Annette’s shoes. The lady looked like she could throw a punch, if required. She probably wouldn’t have ended up here in the first place. That’s probably why she looked so disappointed.

Annette gingerly pushed open the door to the library. Her uncle sat in a corner desk far away from the front, tucked away next to books on farming techniques and historic land deals. It wasn’t a section Annette frequented, and even the desk itself and the chairs on either side of it seemed cold and utilitarian compared to the overstuffed armchairs she used to sink into in her youth, as she curled up studying the finer points of basic spellcasting.

“Come in, Annette, have a seat,” her uncle said, looking up briefly from a sprawl of letters that he had out in front of him. Annette cautiously obeyed, her face expressionless. She didn’t come here to pick a fight, not yet, but she wasn’t particularly eager to be told what to do, no matter how pleasantly her uncle tried to pretend this was something she had a choice in.

“I haven’t seen you around the library much this week, you know,” her uncle added, shifting slightly in his chair as Annette sat across from him. Annette narrowed her eyes at him as he shuffled his papers. He still wasn’t looking at her.

“Do you often keep track of whether or not I’m in the library?” Annette asked. Her voice was completely flat, which only slightly saved the question from being disrespectful.

Her uncle frowned at her, finally looking up. “It’s just something I’ve noticed.”

“Well,” Annette said, with a pointed look towards the empty shelves of spell books. “The selection is more meager than I remember, I guess. Maybe I was less well-read before.”

“You could always try some books on . . . ‘Corn Harvesting and Replanting Techniques,” her uncle suggested, picking a book at random from behind him.

Annette blinked a couple of times. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said finally. This time, her voice wasn’t flat. It was outright sarcastic.

He noticed. “Four Saints, Annette, you tried to cast Sagittae on the _front gate_ ,” he grumbled at her. “What was I supposed to do, let you sit around and learn Meteor?”

“I didn’t try to cast it; I succeeded at casting it,” Annette said, thoroughly unchastized by her uncle’s annoyance. “And if the gatekeeper had just unlocked it like I’d asked, you wouldn’t be paying for construction on a new outer wall, now would you?”

“What was even your plan after that?” he shot back, angrily. “You can barely ride a horse, I don’t put much stock into your wilderness survival techniques, you hadn’t even packed a flask of water – ”

“I just thought I’d test my luck and see what happened,” Annette cried, her voice louder than she’d intended. “It’s not my fault all those bushes caught on fire.”

“How do you even set something on fire with _wind magic_?”

“Did you call me in here to ask me about magic techniques and library books?” Annette asked, abruptly changing the subject. If they were going to have an argument, she would have hoped it would have been about something that actually mattered. But she had often found that her uncle had trouble arriving at the point of his conversation, preferring instead to take his time to get to his main idea. It was a stark contrast to his brother, who always seemed to arrive directly where he wanted, but then had no idea how to converse beyond an immediate purpose.

He glared at her for a moment, then frowned at the letter in front of him. “No,” he finally sighed. “I did not.”

“Well?” Annette asked expectantly. She had vaguely decided that instead of a happy face, she would draw the professor a picture of a cat, and she was now eager to leave this conversation and go back to that.

Her uncle sighed. “I have here,” he said, holding up a piece of paper with rich black calligraphy on the top half of one side, “A letter from a potential suitor.”

Annette’s jaw dropped. Of all the conversations she’d expected to have, this was not one of them.

“I know this might seem unexpected,” her uncle continued, as if he could read her thoughts. Or, Annette supposed, he could just read her face.

“We're in the middle of a _war_ , uncle,” she spluttered.

“I would normally be hesitant to take on such an offer, of course – ”

“This is your idea of keeping me _safe_? Your first version was bad enough, now you’re shipping me off to some noble castle in goddess-knows-where to some man you’ve never even _met_?”

“But I think, given the circumstances, it would be advantageous to House Dominic to hear his request out.”

“If you think, for one moment,” Annette said, her voice dropping to a quiet rage, “That I won’t burn down an _entire wedding chapel_ if you try anything – ”

“Goddess above,” her uncle muttered. “It wasn’t my idea, Annette. Duke Fraldarius wrote to _me_.”

Annette stopped midway through of a list of wanton destruction she was prepared to enact. “Duke Fraldarius?” she asked. “But Lord Rodrigue – he’s – he’s –”

“Rodrigue was slain at Grondor Field, yes,” her uncle finished her sentence for her. “He was a good man. I was sorry to hear of his passing.” He frowned, then added, “But weren’t you – I mean, I assumed you already knew that.” Her uncle didn’t ask her about her previous battle experience, preferring instead to treat her as if her time with Dimitri’s army had really been the result of a kidnapping, or at least a year of studying abroad that she had blessedly returned from before things got out of hand.

“I wasn’t on the front lines when he died,” Annette said, refusing to play by her uncle’s unspoken rules for conversation. “I heard about it from – my friends told me what happened later.”

She had her own unspoken rules of conversation; things she had no intention of discussing with her uncle. With anyone in her family, really.

“At any rate,” he continued, waving the letter as a prop, or perhaps a makeshift shield. “It’s not Rodrigue who wrote to me. His son has recently taken his title as the new head of Fraldarius territory. It is his son who’s extending this offer.”

Annette tried to process all of this, then tried to process _any_ of this. “That doesn’t make sense. Felix wouldn’t – ” she stopped, realizing how strangely informal his name sounded in this space. “I mean, Lord Rodrigue’s son fights with the prince’s army. He wouldn’t have time to return home.”

Her uncle put down the letter and looked at her. “Duke Fraldarius has defected from the rebel army, Annette,” he finally said, having run out of tangents and subject changes to put off the crux of the conversation. “He seeks to abandon his allegiance to former kingdom forces and forge an alliance with the Faerghus Dukedom. He writes to seek your hand in marriage to cement such an alliance.”

Annette suddenly wished her uncle had come up with a few more tangents before arriving at his purpose.

She also wished the library wasn’t so hot. And that the floor wasn’t spinning upwards towards her. And that her chair had armrests she could grab on to.

“What . . . the _fuck_ ,” Annette heard herself whisper, before the world became dark and the floor finally rose up to meet her.

  
Annette Dominic woke up in her childhood bedroom. Pressing her ear against the door, she could hear faint whispers of pity – the poor dear had fainted again, the stress of the war was really too much for such a frail young thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have some intrigue! This isn't my usual wheelhouse of wandering, introspective character pieces, but I’ve been curled up with a winter cold all week and I wanted to start something campy and self-indulgent. Behold, a melodrama. There will be multiple devious plots and dozens of whispered secrets and probably an exciting battle or two. Maybe a car chase, we’ll see how I’m feelin’.
> 
> Annette’s uncle needs a name, I guess. Is there a fan-established one going around or do I need to make one up? My brain settled on “Gottfried,” because I think it would be extremely funny to have brothers named Gilbert and Gottfried, but I will happily take other, less ridiculous, suggestions before the next chapter if anyone’s got ‘em.


	2. Felix Prepares for a Trip

Felix always felt trapped when he returned home.

It didn’t used to be like this. The Fraldarius castle was a delightful labyrinth for a child, full of places to explore and old family heirlooms to repurpose as toys and rumored secret passages to try to uncover. The castle was full of people then, too. When Felix thought back to his childhood, he mostly thought of it in terms of sound: the chaotic hustle of dignitaries arriving or leaving, the laughter from the dining room he could hear long after he’d been sent to bed, music from the drawing room with melodies that he couldn’t remember anymore. He could most clearly remember Ingrid’s laughter, outside his bedroom window, when she was seven and when she was thirteen, screaming with delight as Sylvain or Dimitri or Glenn attempted some new ridiculous feat. Then, of course, the loud crashes and subsequent chaos that accompanied said ridiculous feats.

That was all gone now. The castle was more or less silent. And he hated it there.

Felix stood in his bedroom, staring at his traveling trunk as he calculated how much more he could fit for the trip. Three swords neatly lay on the top of hastily folded clothing, an extra pair of shoes, some writing supplies, and three books. Felix frowned at the weapons. He normally travelled with a minimum of five swords, and more was preferable. But it was evidently bad form to take multiple swords on a diplomatic visit, and he imagined that the Dominic training grounds would have its own supply of practice swords.

A vague, pulsing ache in his left arm reminded Felix that he might not even have the chance to use the training ground, regardless of how well-stocked they were with weapons. He picked up his second-favorite practice sword from the bed, where he had laid out his top choices, and gave it an experimental swing. His fingers refused to close completely around the blade, and he felt it wobble in his grip as pain shot up through his elbow and into his shoulder. 

Still, he thought, gazing at his reflection in the dulled blade, his injury a temporary one. He was supposed to stay off the battlefield and training grounds until his grip improved and his arm stitched itself back together, but that could possibly happen while he was in Dominic. And in the meantime, maybe he could work on his form with his right side. It just wasn’t Felix’s style to travel _without_ a weapon; in a pinch, he was sure he could fight through the pain.

A knock on the door jolted Felix from his indecision. He tossed the practice sword onto the top of the others in the trunk – just in case – and slammed the lid shut as he made his way to the door.

His father’s longtime steward, Matthew, looked back at him impassively as Felix opened the door. Felix corrected himself mentally – he supposed Matthew was _his_ steward now; there wasn’t much sense in serving his father. Regardless, it was hard to imagine the castle without him. Matthew had looked about 85 years old for as long as Felix could remember, and his actual age at this point could be anywhere between 60 and 103. He spoke slowly, in measured, even sentences, and rarely smiled. He and Felix got along swimmingly because of that. He was also the sharpest observer and most efficient accountant that Felix knew; Felix was certain that all of Fraldarius territory would have collapsed into chaos following Rodrigue’s death if Matthew hadn’t been there to keep a steady, quiet, even hand on the situation.

“I’ve spoken to the stables, and we’ve set upon a departure time. You’ll leave for Dominic at an hour past dawn tomorrow, Master Fraldarius,” Matthew said. Giving a sudden cough, he quickly added, “I’m sorry, your grace. It’s hard to adjust to the new names. Duke Fraldarius.”

Felix grimaced, though not from the mistake. “When will you switch to just calling me ‘Felix,’ Matthew?”

“Never, your grace,” Matthew said. Felix felt himself rolling his eyes, and felt more like a sullen teenager, not less, which is usually what happened when he talked to Matthew. The steward continued on, “They’re requesting that you leave your traveling luggage out tonight, so they can load the carriage before departure time.”

Felix glanced back at his trunk. Four swords was probably good. “They can take it whenever, it should be good to go,” he said. “I can go tell them, you don’t have to walk all that way.”

Matthew didn’t argue – he was too polite to say so, but he probably had much more important business than ferrying messages back and forth to the stables, and Felix, frankly, did not. Matthew walked with Felix down the long hallway of bedrooms towards the front entryway, content to accompany him provided they were going in the same direction.

“I still think the carriage is a bit much,” Felix said. “I can repack for horseback easily enough, you know.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Matthew said evenly, unwilling to argue the point. “But it ’s a better show of your station and intention to arrive with a proper retinue. You wouldn’t want to offend.”

“I'm sure I’ll find a way to do that, anyways,” Felix muttered under his breath. Matthew chose not to hear him. Felix added, “It doesn’t seem _proper_ to add a whole group of mouths to feed and bodies to provide beds for; I think horseback sounds way more polite.”

“It’s only for one night, and then they’ll report back here,” Matthew replied. “And you do need to send them back – I’m giving you the best guard for the trip. Unless the lady is particularly against the match, I don’t think you’ll need a battalion while you’re there.”

Felix gave a short, bitter laugh at this. “I’m sure I’ll be fine. I probably stand a better chance of dodging her wind spells than anyone else in this castle.” He frowned. “How am I supposed to get back if I’m sending you back the carriage?” He felt like a fool for asking such basic logistical questions, but he hadn’t particularly needed them when he was the second son. Second sons didn’t need to know much of anything about running an estate; they were generally too busy trying to figure out a way to earn a living.

Matthew’s tone remained nonjudgmental, however. “I’m sure House Dominic will provide you with proper transportation back home,” he said evenly. “It would be the courteous thing to do.”

“It it more or less courteous than attacking your niece in the city streets and dragging her off to gods-know-where?” asked Felix. “That’s the bassline courtesy we’ve got with Gérald Dominic.”

Matthew’s frown was so slight that Felix may have imagined it. “I’m sure you’ve already formed an opinion on such behavior, you grace,” he said. “Mine surely isn’t a necessary addition.”

They’d reached the front hall at this point, and Matthew edged towards a door leading towards the east wing of the castle. He looked at Felix one final time. “I still worry about your plan, Master Fraldarius,” he said gravely. Felix didn’t bother correcting him; in truth, he preferred anything to “your grace.” Matthew added, almost as an afterthought. “What would your father think of such behavior?”

“Well, Matthew, he’d probably be pretty damn disappointed in how the past few weeks have gone for me,” Felix said sharply. They’d had versions of this conversation before, and neither he nor Matthew seemed inclined to change their minds. “But I guess that’s pretty standard with me, isn’t it? Wouldn’t want to change things up too much.”

He was surprised to see Matthew _smile_ in reply to such an answer. “Very well, your grace,” he said, his voice as steady and unmoved as always.

Felix blinked at him. “Why are you looking at me like that. Stop that,” he said, his sullen tone rearing its teenage head once more.

Matthew shook his head, and his smile was gone when he looked up again. “It’s nothing, your grace. Enjoy your walk to the stables.”

And with that, he disappeared through the imposing double doors behind him.

* * *

Felix aimlessly wandered away from the stables twenty minutes later. The stablehand he spoke to had thanked him for offering to put his luggage out early, but assured him that they wouldn’t need it until early the next morning, so he could easily take his time in case he thought of last minute things to pack.

Felix would have objected to the implication that he he was that indecisive, but secretly he was debating adding a fifth sword, after all, so he let the conversation drop, and left the stables having accomplished not much at all.

Absently, he wandered down a side path in the castle, not particularly eager to return inside, but not having much else to do. Training was about all that Felix had right now, and being barred from it due to his injury had left him rather pathetically without options. He tried not to dwell on the depressing suspicion that it was all he had ever had.

He found himself in the same back garden he could hear so clearly outside of his bedroom window. It was a large, unkempt space, with several benches spaced around a large central fountain and an array of trees and overgrown bushes demarcating the walking path. Felix had always liked it more than the more cultivated flower gardens that littered the estate. Even as a child, he had been more fond of the wild, untamed feeling of this side garden, a kind of joyful chaos that nobody sought to contain. He and Glenn had spent most of their summers out here; it was almost big enough to get lost in and suited them for both childish games and, later, natural terrain for the spars he never won.

Felix looked around the garden. It was a particularly difficult place for him to wrap his head around. The memories in it were overwhelming. He was standing on the same path where Glenn had first taught him the basics of swordfighting – they thought they were going behind their father’s back to learn but Felix had later suspected that he’d unknowingly participated in a much longer family tradition than if he’d actually waited for formal training. The hydrangea bushes where he had hidden with Sylvain and Dimitri to see if Glenn would try to kiss Ingrid were wildly overgrown now, but they offered the same vantage point to see the fountain and its closest bench. They were better for hiding in now, if anything. And if Felix walked around to the back of the oak tree in the corner, he knew he’d find a host of crudely carved initials a third of the way up the trunk, some ridiculous ritual that Dimitri had read about the knights of old, something that was supposed to bind together a band of brothers for eternity. Ingrid had objected to the phrasing, but there was an “I.B.G.” on the tree all the same, slightly above all the others.

Most of the memories of the garden were happy ones. He hated them all the same. Felix was against nostalgia, on principle. Still, the garden was the one place in this blasted estate that didn’t echo eerily or overwhelm him with newfound, muted silence. The soundscape of the outdoors remained much the same. There was still a plodding, steady fountain in the center of the garden, the constant stream of water providing an inevitable distraction. There was still the occasional rustle of the bushes, from wind or a spooked squirrel, if not from a gaggle of conniving preteens. And the ghost of Ingrid’s laughter seemed less uncanny here, less distorted and out of place. Felix closed his eyes and allowed himself one moment to breathe, to remember that he used to love this place, to hear Ingrid laugh again.

“Sylvain, I swear to _fuck_ if you can’t keep your hands where I can see them while I’m trying to land - -“

Felix opened one eye and frowned. That was not part of his memory.

That was part of his obnoxious, inescapable present.

“Saint Seiros, why have you abandoned me,” Felix whispered to himself as he looked up into the sky.

A gloriously white pegasus descended into the garden with a flurry of wings and neighs and bickering. (The bickering came from the riders, not from the pegasus herself.) Ingrid landed her mount with more grace and precision than should be expected in such a small space, sliding off to carelessly land on the edge of the fountain before jumping the small distance to the ground below. Sylvain followed after her, hitting the ground with an undignified _thud_ , but landing upright enough to follow after her as she stomped around to the front of the pegasus.

“You said to hang on, Ingrid; I’m not going to fall off and break my arm in Fraldarius territory,” he was saying as he came up behind her. Neither seemed to notice Felix, who was standing there glaring at them scarcely ten feet away. “Do they even have an infirmary here, or do they just think ‘injury builds character’ or whatever?” Sylvain continued.

Ingrid was not distracted by such speculation. “Don’t give me those excuses, there are plenty of – _places_ – to hold onto and you know it,” she spluttered. “You know I’m ticklish; were you trying to make us crash land?”

Sylvain feigned an incredulous look, a performance that Ingrid did not see, as she was resolutely attending to her pegasus. “Why, Ingrid, I had no idea,” he said with a dramatic gasp. “If I’d realized that my mere presence could have unnerved you so, I assure you I never would have – “ his theatrics faded away into a grin as Ingrid turned and leveraged a brutal glare at him. Unfazed, he continued, “So just to be clear, is it that you’re ticklish _here_ –“ with this, Sylvain nudged Ingrid in the ribcage – “or is it _here_? –“ he brought his hand several inches lower, poking her in her side.

Ingrid gave a strangled shriek and flailed her hands wildly. “Don’t you dare, Sylvain, I will drop you in the middle of a field on the way home and tell everyone you were eaten by wolves,” she said, punctuating every few words with a wild swing of her hands.

Sylvain caught a hand easily. “Think of all the people that would miss me, Ingrid.” He pulled her closer. “You wouldn’t do that to yourself, would you?”

Felix coughed, loudly.

The two friends jumped apart, breaking out of their fight (fight? Felix didn’t have the time or the energy to find a better word) and back into reality.

“Felix!” Ingrid cried. “Have you been standing there the whole time?”

“Don’t sound so accusatory. You crash-landed into _my_ garden,” Felix reminded her. He surveyed them both. “I assume you’ve come from Garreg Mach?”

“We have,” Ingrid said quietly.

“And you have some reason for being here?”

“Yes,” said Sylvain, his voice growing suddenly solemn. “We’re here to deliver a message.”

The trio stared at each other in a tense silence for a moment. Out of habit, Felix’s hand twitched to where his sword was usually kept, only to discover he’d left it inside.

Then Sylvain strode forward and wrapped him in a giant bear hug.

“We’re supposed to check that you’re eating three meals a day and not training with your injured arm and that if Annie still has that cold from four weeks ago can you tell her to study less, thank you,” Sylvain said, his voice taking on a higher, singsong pitch. Felix struggled to get out of the embrace, but Sylvain had a few good inches on him. “That’s from Mercedes,” Sylvain added, ruffling Felix’s hair with great condescension as he finally let him out of the hug. “She’s worried about her widdle brother, I think.”

“I hope the wolves eat you,” Felix muttered, trying and failing to smooth his hair back into some semblance of its original ponytail.

“Seriously, all the Blue Lions officers send their regards,” Ingrid said, stepping forward but blessedly not trying to go for a hug, or any other form of affection. “Sylvain just picked the most dramatic example; Mercedes was following us around giving us reminders until the pegasus was literally off the ground.”

“ _All_ of the Blue Lions?” asked Felix sullenly, glaring back at Ingrid.

Ingrid and Sylvain both blushed, and Ingrid looked away. Sylvain scratched the back of his neck awkwardly, a nervous habit he hadn’t been able to shake from their school days.

“Don’t be like that, Fe,” he said, his voice apologetic. “Is the arm healing okay?”

“It’s fine; don’t worry about it,” Felix snapped, shying away from Sylvain as his friend leaned towards him. “It would be better if certain idiots weren’t going for crushing embraces by way of greeting.” Seeing the grin spread across Sylvain’s face and predicting some teasing remark, Felix quickly added, “You didn’t come all this way just to send regards, I hope.”

“As fun as that would be, no,” Sylvain said, his voice dropping back to a serious tone and pitch. “We’re heading up to Gautier territory to see my old man. I figured an in-person conversation would be better than a letter. He’s got a lot of political maneuvering now that Fraldarius territory has uncertain loyalties.”

“We’re completely fucked, is what Sylvain means,” Ingrid said bluntly. “Fraldarius is the most powerful territory in the Kingdom; you potentially siding with the Faerghus Dukedom is a diplomatic nightmare.”

Felix grimaced. Ingrid didn’t have to explain the stakes to him; it was his damn territory they were talking about. “I thought you sent a letter to your father explaining the situation,” he said, instead of pointing this out. 

Sylvain sighed. “I did. He knows you’re not a traitor, and I know you’re not a traitor. But there’s an awful lot of kingdom nobles who don’t know that, Felix. I’m going to help him keep things at a stalemate until you get back from Dominic territory.”

“Until _we_ get back from Dominic territory,” Felix growled by way of correction. “I'm not coming back without Annette.”

He expected a smirk from Sylvain – his friend always seemed to smirk when Annette came up in conversation – but instead, his eyes filled with a concern that Felix wasn’t accustomed to. He almost preferred self-satisfaction. “Of course, with Annette,” he said quietly. “That’s what I meant.”

“Regardless, what were you thinking, coming to Fraldarius territory?” Felix pressed on, unwilling to let the conversation turn sentimental. “Anyone could have seen you flying; pegasus riders aren’t exactly masters of stealth. Are you trying to give the whole game away before I even get to Dominic?”

“Come on, you worry too much,” Sylvain said, his smile far too cheerful given that Felix was yelling at him. “We took a back way. You have to credit Ingrid for her sneaky landing techniques,”

“How can you be so reckless at a time like thi –”

“Felix,” Ingrid said, cutting both him and Sylvain off. “It wouldn’t be unusual for us to make a diplomatic mission here. Your oldest friends, trying to convince you to reverse your decision and return to your comrades? Just don’t smile too much around us and the rumors will stay the way we want them to. And there’s hardly a danger of you smiling too much.”

“So what do you say, Duke Fraldarius,” Sylvain said, holding his hand out to Felix. “Will you abandon your political aspirations and courtship rituals and return to fight for His Majesty’s glory?”

“Fuck off,” said Felix, pushing Sylvain’s hand away.

“There, see? The perfect cover story,” Sylvain said with a smile that Felix did not return.

Felix scowled at the ground, considering Ingrid’s words. “Well,” he finally said, “I suppose if you’re here on a last-ditch diplomatic effort, it would be rude for me to keep you standing outside. Will you be needing rooms for the night?”

“Now you’re talking! I’ll take my standard bedroom, thank you very much,” Sylvain said, grabbing two travel bags off the back of the pegasus and slinging them over his shoulder. “Is old Matthew still running the show around here? I’ve missed that guy.

“He’ll be overjoyed to see you. Maybe at least try to look like this is a serious mission; there are other eyes in the house, you know,” Felix replied. He waved Sylvain away and reached out for the reigns of Ingrid’s pegasus, who promptly shied away from him.

“Hermia’s a bit shy; don’t take it personal,” Ingrid said, grabbing the reigns instead. “You can just show me where to stable her, it’s fine.”

They walked in silence to the stables at the back of the grounds, Ingrid leading her pegasus and Felix keeping his distance. Ingrid’s mounts were always persnickety, and even in the best of cases he preferred to keep his feet on the ground when possible, so he’d never felt particularly comfortable around the creatures.

Ingrid was better at silence than most people Felix knew. But after Felix showed her a free stall in the stable and leaned against the door to watch her brush down Hermia, Ingrid finally broke stillness between them.

“Do you think this plan will work?” she asked, stroking Hermia’s nose and making soft clicking sounds to avoid having to look at Felix after she asked the question.

Felix shrugged. “I told you we should’ve just attacked the castle head-on.”

“You want to get trapped in a pincher attack by Cornelia’s forces?” Ingrid snapped.

“I want to get results,” Felix replied. “I’m not one for playing charades.”

“Those aren’t anywhere near the rules for charades,” Ingrid said with a characteristic eye-roll that Felix knew better than her smile at this point.

“Whatever,” he said, wishing he had something to do with his hands. He awkwardly crossed his arms, which only slightly helped his nervous energy. “You and Annette can teach me when we get back from this. She loves dumb stuff like that.”

Ingrid finally turned to face him, stepping away from Hermia and closing the stall behind her. She looked up at him. “Come back from this safe, alright?” she asked, her voice clearly more nervous than she wanted it to be.

Felix shrugged again. He hated it when Ingrid worried; it was way easier when she was snapping at him. “I’ll be gone three days, tops,” he said, his voice more annoyed than reassuring. “Whatever prison cell they’ve got Annette locked in, they’re going to have to let her out if they want to play this courtship song and a dance. Find her, steal a horse, kick down the front gate, and we’re back in the knight’s hall playing charades before you can guess if I’m a vegetable or a mineral.”

Ingrid wrinkled her nose. “You really don’t know the rules to charades, do you?”

“My point is, you don’t need to keep badgering me about it,” Felix grumbled. “Baron Dominic has already agreed to let me pursue a courtship as an honored guest at their estate. That was the hard part. The rest is just about running faster than him.”

Ingrid stared at Felix skeptically, and he wondered which of her lectures she was going to launch into. To his surprise, she instead threw her arms around him and buried herself against him in an uncomfortably tight hug. Felix awkwardly gave her several pats on the back, which should have ended the hug, but didn’t.

“Run fast, then,” Ingrid whispered into his shoulder. “I can’t lose both of you.”

Felix didn’t know if she meant him and Glenn or him and Annette. Finally wrapping his arms around her shoulders, he realized he didn’t have the heart to ask.

* * *

Much later that evening, Felix awkwardly kicked his trunk out of his room to place it outside the front door. The stablehand’s advice had been good, as he did end up swapping out two swords and adding a fourth book. But now he was stuck dragging his luggage through the halls when he wanted nothing more than to fall into bed. It was a difficult task with only one hand; before he had left Garreg Mach, Mercedes had sternly told him to try to avoid any activity with his left arm until it fully healed. He should have asked Sylvain to help him, perhaps, but he was still attempting to keep up the image of the haughty and aloof defector, if only for the benefit of the household. Beyond Matthew, it was impossible to tell who might be in the joint employment of other territories, and every shred of information about Felix and his companions seemed volatile in this moment.

The trio had taken dinner in a side dining room and spent the evening behind the closed doors of a rarely used parlor. It was a hushed, quiet evening, with Ingrid lightly punching Sylvain’s arm every time he laughed even a little too loudly. But for the most part, they didn’t have to resort to subterfuge to appear to be having somber conversations. Ingrid wasn’t the only one worried about what the next few days would bring, and the gravity of the situation made all three of them more introspective than they normally might be. And yet, despite it all, Felix felt it was one of the most pleasant evenings he had known in weeks, or maybe months. There was something simple and uncomplicated about the three of them sitting around a fire, hashing out plans for the hundredth time and hypothesizing what Edelgard’s or Cornelia’s next move would be. At any rate, after the past few weeks of lies, and false promises, and concealed motives, Felix was relieved to have a handful of hours where he could feel like himself. He had missed that. He wasn’t ready to admit if he had missed Sylvain and Ingrid, but he could admit that.

Finally kicking his traveling trunk into place to the side of his door, Felix was about to go back into his room for the night, but footsteps coming down the hall made him stop and turn towards the sound. Matthew walked towards him from the back rooms of the corridor, his pace as steady and unhurried as the rest of him.

“I thought you’d be in bed by now, Matthew,” Felix said to him as he approached. It seemed strange to just ignore him, although he didn’t have much to say.

“I could say the same to you,” Matthew replied evenly. “You’ve a long journey tomorrow, after all.”

“I’m heading that way now,” Felix said. “Sylvain and Ingrid kept me up longer than I’d planned.”

Matthew nodded, as if this was the answer he expected to hear. “It was nice to have them here for the night,” he said. “Hearing their voices reminds me of . . . happier times.”

“You’re doing that thing with your face again,” Felix told him, desperate to avoid nostalgia.

“Smiling, you mean?” Matthew clarified. “You might try it some time, you grace.”

“Matthew, why do I feel like when you call me ‘your grace,’ it’s more of an insult than a compliment?”

“Perhaps it will just take time to grow used to the title,” Matthew suggested benignly. Felix finally returned the smile, coupled with a slight, short laugh. Matthew took this as permission to continue down the hallway, with no goodnights needed. He was always efficient.

“Matthew,” Felix called after him. “Wait.”

The old steward stopped, turning around slightly to look at Felix.

“Why did you smile, this afternoon?” Felix asked him. “It was an unpleasant conversation. This whole plan is an unpleasant business.”

Matthew took a step closer. Felix realized for the first time that he had at some point in his life outgrown the man; he now looked down at him slightly when they talked. Matthew didn’t smile as he replied.

“I was just thinking, your grace,” he said. “How much you’re beginning to remind me of your father. He was also remarkably stupid when it came to protecting the people he loved.”

Perhaps knowing that none of Felix’s replies would be generous, he left before Felix could compose himself enough to come up with one.

Felix knew that his journey started early the next morning, but he still lay staring at the ceiling for a long time that night before sleep finally found him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have some exposition! So . . . much . . . exposition. 
> 
> Anyways, now we have a plan in place, we have we have some stakes in place. Next chapter, maybe Felix and Annette will actually get to see each other. Which sadly means no Ingrid and Sylvain, for now. Maybe they'll show up in later chapters, though! What's a Blue Lions story without all the Blue Lions, right?
> 
> Also, Baron Dominic has a name now! Some of you pointed out that Gottfried is a bit confusing when there's already a Godfrey (this game has . . . many characters), so Gérald it is! I was this close to naming him "Sullivan," but I always like Fire Emblem siblings to have alliterative names; it's how you know they're related. Thanks to Enilda_1201 for the suggestion! (Anyone who points out that it sounds like "Jeralt" gets a bop on the nose. . . you just have to really lean into the French, okay.)


	3. Annette Makes Herself Presentable

Annette shuffled her hands awkwardly on the table in front of her. The table was too tall or the chair was too low or she was too short – she wasn’t sure which it was, but she was having trouble remembering what she usually did with her arms when she sat at a table. She didn’t remember having this trouble in the war councils she’d attended over the past several months – but then, she’d usually had about five quills and three books and several blank sheets of paper to distract her, as she hurriedly took minutes on the conversation while still finding time to slip notes to Mercedes, sitting on her left, and draw cartoonish pictures of flowers and cats on Felix’s paper, directly to her right. He never took real notes, but he brought the paper every time, anyways.

But her she didn’t really need to take notes for this council, which consisted of her, her uncle, and a spy recently returned from Garreg Mach, in the employment of the Dukedom, sent to give House Dominic a full report on the situation with House Fraldarius. She hadn’t caught his name, as her uncle hadn’t bothered with introductions when she entered the meeting room. Annette was frankly surprised she was allowed to sit in on the meeting at all, but she supposed her uncle cared about her enough that if he was going to use her marriage for political power, he would at least let her hear what sort of power that was going to be.

Annette settled on resting her chin in one hand, ignoring her mother’s constant reminders not to put her elbows on the table, which she could still hear in the back of her head whenever she was trying to act like a proper lady. She turned her attention back to the spy’s report, wishing she had some writing materials, as that always helped her concentrate.

“ . . . several reports of emissaries between House Fraldarius and House Gautier, though none have led to a significant change in the army’s structure following Rodrigue’s death. The Fraldarius army remains defensive of the territory border above all else,” the spy was saying. Annette had only barely been able to follow his recapitulation of the various placements of armies and factions in the northeast – although Byleth had always told her she excelled at battle tactics when given enough time, her geography was shaky without a map, and he spoke too quickly for her to have time to catch her breath and really think about the situation. Her uncle took everything in stride, however, and seemed to follow it perfectly. The spy continued, “Although Fraldarius seems in no hurry to seek a treaty with House Gautier, he also has made no official overtures with Cornelia. It seems he wants House Dominic to be his main point of contact for discussing his territory’s potential to join the Dukedom.”

He uncle frowned, nodding as he listened. He didn’t take notes, which Annette thought was equal parts foolish and disrespectful. How could he concentrate? How could he _remember_? But he seemed to have learned more from the dispatch than she had, as he muttered to himself, “It’s an unusual move, approaching our territory for an alliance. I don’t understand what he would get out of it.”

The spy spoke up in response. “A common theory I’ve heard from many I’ve spoken to is that he’s doing this as a tactical move against Fhirdiard, even as he seeks an alliance. By effectively cutting Cornelia out of the conversation, he leverages his territory’s position and power. He can declare his intentions without showing initial deference.” The spy shrugged. “If so, he’s using you, my Lord, but in a way that is advantageous to House Dominic’s own position. Diplomatically arranging an alliance with House Fraldarius would easily tip the war in our favor; the Empress would probably overlook your initial . .. shaky cooperation at the start of the conflict.”

Gérald Dominic held up his hand and the spy immediately stopped talking. Annette wondered how much of this conversation her uncle really wanted her to hear. As if she didn’t know the danger her House was in. As if she couldn’t read between the lines.

As her uncle lowered his hand, the spy added as an afterthought, “My informants also tell me this Fraldarius heir was something of a black sheep in his family. Spiteful, if you will. It could be his motivations aren’t based in tactical logic, but lashing out, intending to cause confusion and harm. He’s quite young to be assuming this position, you know. I’ve not heard him described as particularly mature for his age.”

Annette’s uncle nodded, his eyes slightly closed in concentration. Then he turned to Annette, catching her off guard – no one had spoken to her since the meeting started. “You went to school with him,” he said, as usual ignoring that they were actually a part of the same army less than a month ago. “Is this an accurate assessment?”

Annette felt inexcusably naïve as realization hit her. She wasn’t here because she deserved to know information; she was here because she could potentially provide information. About Felix, specifically. About the Blue Lions, more generally.

“Felix?” she asked, realizing she had to give some answer. “He was, um. He was nice.”

Gérald narrowed his eyes at her, trying to decide what “nice” could possibly mean in this context. “What about his loyalties?” he asked. “Did he seem particularly devoted to the former prince? His father just died; is he likely to channel that anger and grief against his former liege?”

Annette blinked. “You’re asking me about Felix and Dimitri?” A half dozen memories flashed into her head at the same time: Her abject horror the first time she’d heard Felix call Dimitri “boar.” Felix, shaking, grabbing onto her and pulling her away from Dimtri’s path as the prince stalked out of the Holy Mausoleum with an expression of violent and unstoppable rage. The dozens of times Annette had passed Felix on her way to prayers and choir practice, as he stood at the back of the cathedral staring at Dimitri’s hulking, sullen silhouette. Dimitri’s same silhouette, standing in the doorway of Felix’s bedroom as Felix buried his face against Annette, refusing to cry, refusing to speak, too lost in his own grief to even notice that the door had opened, or to listen to it close as Dimitri slowly walked away.

“Dimitri and Felix were . . . things were . . . complicated,” Annette finally replied. Her uncle sighed again. She probably wasn’t going to be invited back to family meetings after this.

“Actually, I have information that could potentially shed some light on that,” the spy cut in, saving Annette from having to decide how much information she even wanted to share at the moment. “Fraldarius’s departure from the army was evidently not a direct result of his father’s death.”  
  
“No?” Gérald asked, leaning forward.

The spy shook his head. “The timeline doesn’t match up. There was a significant gap between Grondor Field and the departure. There _have_ been reports, however, that mere days before he left, there was a violent altercation between Fraldarius and the prince.” He paused for effect, then added. “Extremely violent. During a war council meeting.”

Gérald raised an eyebrow. “You have eyes on the inside of their war council, now?”

The spy shook his head, “Don’t I wish. No, this comes from informants inside of Garreg Mach – reports are contradictory, but some claim the fight spilled out into the outer grounds and some just claim to have witnessed the aftermath.” Annette felt her heart plummet before remembering that, first off, Felix was evidently a villain now, and not in a fun and teasing sense, and second off, he must have survived if he was sending marriage proposals. But she’d seen enough of the “aftermath” of Dimitri’s fights to shudder, all the same. The spy ignored her slight gasp, continuing, “It’s reliable information, though. I have it from three separate sources that the Fraldarius heir sustained an injury from the fight that’s left him unable to fight; even informants in the Fraldarius territory have made note of it.”

Gérald rounded on Annette again. “Could this Fraldarius boy fight after Grondor field?” he asked her.

“He was fine after Grondor field,” Annette said dully. “Fine” was the wrong word for it, but he could certainly fight. They could barely get him to leave the training grounds, in fact. Annette couldn’t convince him to eat, could barely get him to sleep –

“So something went wrong, that much is clear,” her uncle muttered, snapping Annette out of her memories. “It still doesn’t explain why he’s chosen _our_ house for negotiation, but it might explain why he’s so eager to form an alliance overall. Revenge is a strong motivation.”

“Perhaps you aren’t taking the aspect of a marriage proposal into enough consideration,” the spy said, his voice taking a slight edge that Annette didn’t care for. “Your niece is very beautiful.”

Her uncle absolutely glowered in response. “My niece is probably very tired from listening to us prattle on,” he said, his voice with an edge of its own. “Do you have any more information for me, or are we done here?”

“As it happens, I do,” the spy replied. “I’ve received good information about the southwestern territories that may be of use to your front lines.”

Annette’s uncle nodded and held up his hand, turning to Annette. “Duke Fraldarius and his retinue will arrive some time in the late afternoon, barring any unforeseen circumstances,” he told her. “I’m sure you want to rest before his arrival, and you’ll need time to make yourself presentable. I won’t be joining you for lunch.”

He turned away. The implication was clear. Annette tried to take as long as possible to leave the room, in hopes she might overhear something interesting that she could look up on a map later, but both men were perfectly content to sit in silence until she had made of her way out of the meeting room, the imposing doors closing firmly behind her.

***

Felix’s party arrived hours later, late in the afternoon. Annette had not used the intervening hours to “make herself presentable” – whatever that meant. She’d grabbed a sandwich from the kitchens, retreated back into her room, and spent the afternoon reading over the same three chapters of an account of King Loog’s most famous warlock advisor, her sandwich lying half-eaten on her bedside table. The warlock was able to attack from a distance of over 100 yards away, a skill Annette was extremely jealous of. Passages describing his actual attacks tended to be as bombastic as they were useless, but she was optimistic that a solid understanding of his early life and training regimen might reveal some tricks she could try.

She had little luck, which may have been because her eyes were unwilling to focus on sentences for longer than a handful of words before her thoughts drifted to Felix. What _was_ he doing. He had written to uncle, not her, so she had no way of reading the situation, literally or figuratively. She thought back to his arguments with Dimitri, the casual insults he threw at Sylvain on a daily basis, the outright scorn he seemed to have for the world as a whole. On the surface, perhaps it made sense that he’d never particularly valued his alliance with the now crumbling kingdom. He had never been ones for knights, for stories of chivalry and honor. If all he wanted was strength, joining forces with the overwhelming strength of the Empire and with Cornelia’s newfound rule would certainly provide him that. But Annette didn’t know Felix on paper, the Felix that appeared in the reports her uncle’s informants brought, based on status and position and whispered observations. She knew Felix as flesh and blood, someone who threw himself in front of allies in battle to block attacks as if his own life barely mattered, someone who blushed if she grabbed his hand when he wasn’t expecting it, someone who once slept outside the infirmary for two days waiting for Sylvain to wake up, only to tell him he was an idiot for getting injured and stomping out before the groggy knight could reply. Annette couldn’t reconcile these two versions of Felix in her head. Perhaps she had been wrong about him; perhaps she had never understood him. But none of that explained why she was so desperate to see him again, as she sat on her bed reading the same sentence over and over and watching the hours tick by at an agonizing rate.

She was not closer to answering any of these questions when Lissa frantically knocked on her door and announced that Duke Fraldarius’s traveling party had been spotted and she should hurry down to receive them as soon as she could.

In a tiny, useless form of rebellion, Annette had taken to walking slowly in response to any and all summons these past few weeks. If she couldn’t be free, she could at least be frustrating. It might not help the Blue Lions but it made her feel better. But today, she cursed herself for walking faster, not slower, than usual. She cursed herself even more for the sudden, momentary wish that she maybe should have worn something nicer, or at least tried to do something with her hair.

She stood with her uncle in the grand entry hall of the castle, rather ostentatiously placed with a portrait of the crest of Dominic displayed behind them. Her uncle nodded as she approached, but didn’t say anything. Annette tried not to fidget, not wanting to show how anxious she was by something as simple as an initial greeting.

After what felt like an eternity of waiting, a footman finally opened the double doors to the front of the castle, loudly announcing the arrival of the Duke of Fraldarius and his companions. The sun was beginning to dip in the sky in the late afternoon, and Annette was momentarily blinded as the traveling party entered the castle. Her eyes finally adjusted to see several servants and a handful of guards, with Felix Fraldarius leading the group with a typical, unmistakable scowl as he looked around the entryway. He had on a more elaborate outer coat than his usual, beat-up blue jacket, which made him seem more imposing somehow, and Annette was surprised to note he only carried one sword at his side. She wondered how many daggers he’d hidden in his pockets to compensate; in the battlefield she had seen him drop his sword and produce a dagger from his boots, from his belt, and once, most shockingly, from where it had served to hold his hair in place.

It would have been ridiculous to say he’d changed much; it hadn’t even been a month since she’d last talked to him. Her initial reaction was to feel a flood of relief at the familiarity of it all – Felix frowning, his hand on his sword out of instinct, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else than where he was. But Annette was sure it couldn’t be her imagination that something was different about him as he stood before her and her uncle, flanked by a small gathering of servants and soldiers who were deeply loyal to his house. It was strange to see Felix surrounded by people, to begin with – even on the battlefield, he insisted he preferred to work alone. His eyes seemed slightly sunken into his face, which was drawn and somehow even more pale than she remembered, and there was something fierce and hungry in the way he evaluated the scene before him, looking around the high ceilings and generations of familial décor before settling on the pair in front of him. As they finally rested on Annette, his eyes softened slightly, and for a moment she recognized her friend behind the haughty confidence and judgment of Faerghus’s most powerful noble. But his expression hardened once more as her uncle spoke.

“Welcome to Castle Dominic, Lord Felix,” he said, his voice at once both welcoming and powerful, a diplomatic skill that had served him in entertaining visiting dignitaries for as long as Annette had known him. “I trust your journey was uneventful.”

“It was,” Felix said.

Gérald waited for Felix to elaborate. When no follow-up came, he gave a slight cough and continued on. “We’re honored by your arrival; you are most welcome here.” He gave Annette a nudge between her shoulder blades, pushing her forward slightly. “May I present my niece, Miss Annette Fantine Dominic?”

Annette grimaced at the ridiculous formality, the implication that Felix didn’t know her name. But Felix reached out and took her hand, the proper formal response, bringing her fingers to his lips for a moment that lasted a fraction of a second too long.

“Miss Dominic,” he said, his voice low enough that she wasn’t sure her uncle would be able to make out his words. “It’s been too long.”

Annette looked up at him. She’d hoped that seeing him face to face would clarify all her concerns – assure her that he was good, that he was on her side, that this was all a ridiculous misunderstanding. But the formal scripts of noble greetings didn’t offer her nearly as much insight as she wanted. “Not so long as all of that. I assure you I am the same as always, Felix,” she said, trying to keep her voice equally soft. Realizing he still held onto her hand, she pulled back suddenly. “I’m sorry, I suppose you’re Duke Fraldarius now,” she added, her voice accusatory even if her words were apologetic.

Felix frowned at her for a brief moment. “Please, Felix is fine,” he said with a slight bow of his head. “I had hoped that . . . we could be the same as always, as well.”

Before Annette had a chance to ask him how the hell she was supposed to interpret any of that, Felix had turned his attention to her uncle.

“Your letter was certainly a surprise for the whole household, but I’m optimistic we can reach an agreement that is advantageous to all parties,” her uncle said as Felix extended his hand for a handshake, which they both dropped quickly. “I look forward to discussing your future place in the Faerghus Dukedom, Lord Felix.”

Felix smiled slightly. Annette recognized it as insincere. “Please, Duke Fraldarius is fine,” he said, his voice returned to its normal volume, which was still remarkably soft. “I look forward to discussing the future relationship between House Fraldarius and House Dominic, as well.”

If his response flustered Baron Dominic, he did not show it. “I’m sure your men are tired after such a long journey,” he continued on, moving swiftly through the motions of common courtesy. “If they will follow my servants upstairs, we have prepared rooms for them.”

Felix nodded to the small crowd behind him, which slowly began to disperse around the trio, disappearing further into the castle. “Your stablehands were most helpful when we arrived,” he said. “I thank you for such hospitality.”

Annette wondered at what point in such official proceedings she was allowed to bury her face in a pillow and scream. Her answer came faster than she expected.

As the entry hall emptied and left the three of them alone, her uncle turned to Felix once more. “I'm sure you must be tired from your journey, but I believe an initial conversation may be in order, to help set the parameters for future discussions. There’s much that’s hard to say in a letter, don’t you agree?” he said. Taking Felix’s frown as a reply in the affirmative, Baron Dominic turned to Annette. “Annette, perhaps Duke Fraldarius will be able to find you in the library after our conversation?” he asked her. It wasn’t a question.

Annette’s desire to uselessly rebel flared at the back of her mind. But so did a stern reminder to pick her battles. At any rate, there were plenty of pillows to scream into on the library couches. And she did want to speak to Felix, alone, with the hope that her uncle wouldn’t follow after him.

She looked at Felix. “I’m glad your journey here was safe and swift,” she told him. “Welcome to the Dominic territory.”

His eyes remained hardened and searching as she walked away.

***

Annette found her favorite couch in the library, placed in front of a fireplace. She always felt it was a shame that she hadn’t had more friends, growing up – the setup in this corner of the library would have been delightful for entertaining guests, with a central low table and surrounding armchairs and that cheerful, warm fireplace as a centerpiece. But other than the lone servant shelving books on the other side of the library, there was no one around as Annette nestled against the corner of the couch. She’d settled for imaginary friends as a child, curled up the couch reading about knights and sorcerers and heroes of old. Eventually the heroes of old were replaced by mathematical formulae and treatises on the best approaches to magical tomes and ancient spellcraft, which proved to be comforting friends in their own right. Now, however, she sat alone on the couch, curled up against one of the pillows, staring into the fireplace as it dissolved into ember. She didn’t have the energy to pretend she was interested in a book today. She just stared, and wondered, and worried.

Felix usually had a way of sneaking up on her, back in Garreg Mach. But although she didn’t hear him enter the library, she wasn’t surprised to his voice behind her.

“It was hard to find the library without any music to follow,” he said. Annette looked up to see him standing by an armchair, his arms crossed as he looked down at her. “Not as interested in blowing this library up?”

Annette stared at him, trying to make sense of who stood before her. The first familiar face in almost a month. A selfish, opportunistic traitor. A man she was being forced to marry. The boy she’d always hoped would propose.

It was a lot of conflicting information.

Annette turned away from him, curling back in on herself. “I don’t sing much, these days,” she mumbled in reply. “There’s no reason to.”

She had expected him to sit in the armchair next to her, but Felix surprised her by walking around and taking a seat across from her on the couch. She blinked at him, drawing her knees to her chest to leave a wider distance between them. He looked at her intently.

“They’ve been feeding you, right?” he asked, which wasn’t what she expected him to say.

She blinked at him. “They’ve been – what?” she asked, unsure how she’d be alive if they hadn’t.

“It’s just, you kind of look, I feel like you’re – “ Felix waved his hands in front of her, as if that explained things. “I just want to make sure they’re taking care of you.”

“My uncle wouldn’t let me starve to death,” Annette said, with more bitterness than love in her voice. “I skip meals sometimes, I don’t know. I forget to eat. Or I don’t want to see people.” She shrugged, unsure why she was trying to justify herself to Felix, or even what he was worried about.

“And, um . . . where are you staying?” he asked her, clearly struggling to phrase the question. “Your room, is it alright?”

“It’s fine? I lived here for years before attending school at Garreg Mach, Felix, it’s just my old bedroom,” Annette said. She noticed the tension drop out of Felix’s shoulders and had a sudden moment of clarity about his strange line of questioning. “What, did you think my uncle was making me sleep in the castle dungeons? Hardly a way to treat your family’s most marriageable candidate.”

Felix grimaced, and Annette thought it was nervy of him to scoff at marriage prospects considering that was his reason for being here. But his voice was genuine when he spoke. “I didn’t mean to pry,” he said softly. “There were reports of you being dragged unconscious through the streets; I was worried.” He sighed deeply, suddenly dropping eye contact. “I’m glad to see you’re unharmed,” he added, almost to himself.

“Reports?” Annette repeated. She thought back to the spy she had met that morning, the unpleasant confirmation that Garreg Mach was not the safe haven of likeminded comrades that she’d always wanted it to be. “Where do you get these reports, Felix?”

Felix’s eyes moved for only moment, but Annette saw him quickly glance towards the castle librarian calmly shelving books behind her. Too calmly, Annette thought to herself. Too slowly. It was easy to shelve books and eavesdrop at the same time, after all.

  
“Just, you know,” Felix replied, his eyes only halfway on Annette. “Hearsay. Bystanders. People who might know.”

Annette frowned. His answer gave her no sense of Fraldarius’s spy network – or why he might have been interested in her fight against her uncle in the first place. “Well, I guess they might be a better source than me,” she said bitterly. “I was, as you note, unconscious at the time. In my defense, it was forty against one.”

Felix suddenly leaned forward, grabbing Annette’s elbow. “Why did you do it, Annette?” he asked, his voice whispered and strangled and a look of genuine concern in his eyes. Annette could get drunk on Felix’s eyes when he was concerned; she saw it so rarely, and knowing that he could care, that he could care about _her_ , always had made her feel slightly dizzy.

Except now, all she could think was how little he cared about anyone else, evidently. What was the use of his concern, if he’d willingly betray everyone she loved in order to get to her.

“I could ask the same of you, Felix,” she whispered back fiercely, shaking his hand off of her. “Why did _you_ do this? Why are you here? How could you – how could you leave?”

Felix’s glance behind her was more obvious now, the pause in his answer longer. His hand vaguely grasped at the empty air where her arm had been. Finally, he stood up. Looking down at her, he offered a hand.

“It’s awfully stuffy in here, don’t you think?” he asked her. “Your uncle says the gardens are beautiful this time of year; would you care to join me?”

What choice did she have but to accept.

***

The gardens actually were quite beautiful this time of year, with an entire flock of marigolds in full bloom. The sun hung low in the sky now, promising to disappear behind the horizon at any moment but casting the entire garden in a warm, golden light as it glimmered behind the west hedges. Felix and Annette walked side by side through the array of flowers. Their silence was tense; he had offered her arm but she refused to take it, and they were both painfully aware of the fraction of space between them as they walked – and how easy and expected it would be for them to close that gap.

  
“Are those violets?” Felix asked eventually, pointing to a section of purple flowers as they passed by.

Annette scrunched up her nose as she looked at them, trying to remember. “Verbena, I think,” she said. “It’s not violets, those look way different. We grew them in the greenhouse, remember?”

Felix blushed slightly, and Annette bit her lip, wishing she hadn’t brought up greenhouses in any context. The last time she was in the greenhouse at Garreg Mach, both she and Felix got caught up confessing feelings that left them flustered and unsure of both themselves and each other by the end. She’d wanted to ask him what he’d meant – if he was just embarrassed that he liked her singing so much, or if he was wanting something more from _her_ , as a person, as a friend, as someone he cared about – but the battle at Grondor Field had rendered all her questions petty and irrelevant. And now she was sticking her foot in her mouth once again, adding one more awkward memory to their already strained conversation. But Felix seemed more embarrassed, she realized, by his lack of horticultural knowledge, rather than by references to conversations they had never quite finished. He mumbled, “I just watered and weeded; I didn’t really pay attention beyond that.”

“Don’t let Dedue hear you say that; I swear he had a different approach to each individual blossom, let alone each type,” Annette said, relieved to keep the conversation on flowers. “That’s most of what I know about flowers, honestly; he was always good at explaining what we doing when I worked with him.” She smiled slightly, remembering how charming it was to see hands nearly twice the size of her face working gingerly to help a tiny crocus find its patch of sunlight or to carefully cut back roses so they would regrow with a vengeance.

“Yeah, we didn’t really talk much when we worked together,” Felix said, and Annette couldn't trace whether it was bitterness or regret in his voice. For a moment she’d felt like she could sink back into the memory of her friends at Garreg Mach and drag Felix along with her, but when she mentioned his old classmate she could feel his shoulders stiffen. He looked around the gardens. “I’m surprised to see you’ve got people working out here this late.”

Annette turned her head to see a gatekeeper leaning against the far wall, watching them walk. “Oh,” she said. “He’s not here to work in the gardens. I think he’s just watching to make sure I don’t stab you or something.”

Felix raised his eyebrows slightly. “Oh? Are you planning on stabbing me?”

Annette shrugged her shoulders. “It’s a valid concern, I guess. I threatened to stab him a couple of weeks ago.” Noticing Felix’s eyebrows raising even more, she quickly added, “I probably wouldn't have done it! I just wanted to see if I could get him to unlock the front gate.”

Felix winced, a look of understanding crossing his face. “So marriageable candidates don’t stay in dungeons, but they also don’t leave the grounds. Unless they stab someone.”

“That’s about the long and the short of it,” Annette said. “You can’t marry them off if they’ve run away.”

“Well, is there any way to get him to leave us alone?” Felix asked. “I’d really prefer to talk to you without people . . . staring like that?”

“Welcome to my life,” Annette said glumly. As they rounded a corner of the gardens, she pointed to a path leading into a series of interlocking hedges that stretched above their heads. “Here, we can try to lose him in the hedge maze. I used to be pretty good at navigating this thing.”

Annette steered Felix onto the path, taking the lead as they walked into the maze. She’d spent enough time wandering the maze when she first moved into the castle that she still had a fairly good sense of which paths would lead to the center. Felix was content to walk behind her and follow her lead for the first few minutes, but he quickly caught on to her pattern of navigation and resumed his walk beside her. Annette glanced over at him, but he wasn’t looking at her, instead watching the path they took as he was trying to commit it to memory. Annette sighed inwardly. He’d roped her into his plans to evade her uncle’s watchdogs, he trusted her to lead him through a literal maze without getting them lost, but he gave her no sign of his intentions or his goals. How could he betray all of their friends and then expect her to treat him like everything was _normal_ , like they could go back to that conversation in the greenhouse and move on as if nothing had happened?

She needed more information. That was the only solution.

Looking over at Felix once more, Annette finally spoke up. “You’re only wearing one sword,” she remarked, trying to keep her voice casual.

Felix looked a bit surprised that she’d notice. “I am. My steward suggested that it might be improper to show up on a strictly diplomatic visit in full battle armor.”

“It’s on the wrong side.”

Felix almost stopped walking at this, glancing down at himself in surprise. But Annette kept walking, and he followed. “The wrong side?” he prompted her.

“Yes,” she said, pointing to his sword. “Usually if you only have one sword, you wear it on your right side. Right now it’s on your left. Why’s that?”

“I’m surprised you noticed that,” Felix muttered, not answering her question.

Annette giggled. “It’s easy to remember. I’m used to walking on your left so I don’t bump into the sword. But now –” at this she slid closer into him, sliding her arm around his back so that he put on arm around her shoulder out of habit – “now I have to walk on your right.” She leaned into Felix, softly running her fingers against his spine. “Why the switch?”

She could see Felix blush as she leaned up against him, and he stumbled through his answer without seeming to give much thought to what he was saying. “My left arm is injured,” he explained, a fact Annette already knew. “I can barely swing a sword with it at the moment. My right arm is much stronger, for once. So I switched sides for the sword, too. I didn’t think anyone would notice.”

“You’re injured?” Annette asked, widening her eyes and leaning against Felix’s shoulder as she looked up at him. “That’s so awful! What happened?”

“I got in a fight. Don’t worry about it,” Felix said. Breaking eye contact, he looked around behind them for a moment. “That guy’s been trailing us the entire time we’ve been in the maze. I don’t think we’re shaking him.”

Annette sighed, brought back to reality from her fact-finding mission, which hadn’t been particularly successful thus far. “My uncle might have told him to follow us, I’m not sure,” she said, not daring to look back herself. “But we’re almost to the center; let’s regroup there.”

After a few more turns, they did in fact come to the center of the hedge maze. The center of the maze was a fairly large circle, with various paths leading away from the center in opposite directions. A small fountain bubbled in the center, with a single bench in front of it. Annette had learned long ago that the bench provided a clue to the exit – it faced across from the quickest path out of the maze. A very ugly statue of a pegasus rider sat at the top of the fountain. Annette had spent a good amount of time trying to figure out who the rider was, originally, but hadn’t found much luck in either historical texts or family biographies. She was fond of the fountain, though. It was small but cheerful, and quite relaxing to read by in the summertime.

Felix seemed uninterested in the fountain, or the surrounding area, however. He craned his neck to try to catch a glimpse of the wayward gatekeeper. “Annette, I don’t see how we could’ve lost that guy; he seemed to know the maze as well as you,” he said, leaning in towards her as he kept his voice low.”

“No, you’re right, he’s definitely still here,” Annette whispered in reply. “He thinks we can’t see him but he’s hiding one lane over, I saw him following us in the last few turns.”

“This is ridiculous,” Felix said, annoyance creeping into his voice. “Why are we running from a _gardener_.”

“Technically he’s a soldier, he just happened to be in the gardens – ” Annette trailed off in her explanation as Felix walked away from her, back around the way they’d just walked.

“Excuse me, you there!” Felix called to the guard. Annette could now see the top of the guard’s helmet as he stood up; he must have been crouching to try to eavesdrop better. “Are you doing anything important right now?” Felix asked.

“Me? Um, just trimming . . . these hedges,” the guard stumbled through as an excuse.

“Great. If you don’t mind, would take a message to one of my men, up in the castle? His name is Sylvain, I’m sure someone will know which room he’s in,” Felix said. He’d rounded the corner completely now, and Annette could barely hear either of them. “It’s about travel plans for tomorrow.”

Annette couldn’t make out the rest of the conversation, but she heard footsteps walking away towards the exit of the maze, and when Felix returned moments later he was alone.

Annette crossed her arms and looked up at him. “Sylvain was definitely not in your traveling party; I would have noticed _that_.”

“I also don’t have any real messages about traveling plans,” Felix said. Crossing his arms in a mirror of her, he absent-mindedly tried to lean back against the hedge behind him, but grimaced and stood up straight again. The sticks and thorns clearly didn’t make for a comfortable wall. “It was just the first name that popped into my head. Hopefully it’ll distract him for a while, though.”

Annette took a step closer. “You’ve become quite adept at getting what you want, Felix,” she remarked as she looked up at him, lightly placing a hand on his arm.

Felix’s eyes flashed to his arm, then gazed down at Annette, meeting her eyes. “Honestly, Annie, all I’ve wanted this entire day is a chance to talk to you alone.”

Annette nodded solemnly. “I feel the same way,” she whispered.

With a final step forward, she pushed Felix back up against the hedge behind him, hearing a crunch from the branches as he stumbled backwards. Her other hand shot forward, pressing a dagger against Felix’s neck.

“I’ve lost nearly everything I’ve cared about since coming here,” Annette hissed at Felix, trying to keep her voice from shaking, in anger or fear or both. “My friends, my family, my studies. It’s all gone. And then _you_ show up claiming you want to destroy my country, claiming that you have the power to take that away from me, too.” She stood on her tiptoes, pressing further against Felix as she angled the dagger she’d stolen from his jacket pocket further up against his chin. “At this point, I have nothing left to lose. And _you_ , Felix Fraldarius, have five seconds to convince me that I shouldn’t kill you where you stand.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have a cliffhanger!
> 
> Normally I’m annoyed by situations where everything could be cleared up if the main characters would just *talk* to each other, but we have plenty of in-game evidence that Annette is the type to shoot first and ask questions later, so . . . bad decisions for everyone! I’m sure this will work out just fine!
> 
> I like the idea of Felix as left-handed, so I made him left-handed, and then gave him a left-sided injury, but now I have to do mental gymnastics whenever I talk about the injury because I can barely keep track of left from right in the real world that I inhabit as an actual person. Anyways if I mess something up, let the record show that Felix favors his left arm and injured his left arm, and I am an idiot who can’t keep that straight in her head.
> 
> I’m trying to keep up a weekly Thursday posting schedule, but I was a little bit ahead on this one so I thought, why not. So here’s a bonus chapter, I guess. We’ll see if we can make Monday postings a more regular thing. Thanks to everyone who’s said they were excited about where this story is going – technically we’re not to any fake engagement yet, but at least we can say stuff is happening now, right? Until next time!


	4. Felix Improvises

_Five._

Felix realized the dagger was his as soon as he saw it. His hand had automatically gone to his jacket pocket, to find his knife missing from the lining, before Annette forced his arm backwards, knocking him off balance. It was ridiculous that she had been able to pocket it without him noticing – and for gods’ sakes, where had she been _hiding_ it this whole time – but he had been plenty distracted when she was putting her hands all over him. He’d trained for any conceivable situation on a battlefield for being disarmed by your opponent. None of those tactical situations accounted for cute girls smiling at him. He realized, and not for the first time, what a terrible candidate he was for this particular mission, but he also knew that inwardly cursing himself would do little to defuse the current situation, which needed to be his first priority. He had been momentarily disoriented when Annette slammed into him with more force and vitriol than he would have thought possible, but he was quickly adjusting to the circumstances. That was the most important part of staying alive on a battlefield – being able to take stock of your position, to understand your options.

_Four._

The easiest thing would be to disarm her. Annette leaned into his right arm, standing almost on her tip-toes to press the knife against him. Even with his injured arm, it would be simple enough to grab her wrist and twist until the knife fell. Or to leverage the hand that was pinning him in order to turn her to the side and force her against the hedges. Or to simply push her back with enough force to knock her off balance, sending her stumbling into the fountain behind her. They were all feasible enough options, from a tactical standpoint. But even as Felix’s fingers instinctively twitched to respond to the danger, to get away from the steel against his throat, he stopped himself from moving. The sword he carried was all but ceremonial, Matthew had seen to that, but his knives were sharpened to cut cleanly and quickly. One wrong move could send a sharpened knife flying; he was watching out for more than his own safety, whether or not Annette believed that at the moment.

_Three._

At the same time that Felix’s training was shouting at him all the best ways to knock a knife out of enemy hands, he was also battling an overwhelming desire to slide his hands down Annette’s arms, wrap his arms around her waist, and hold her until she stopped shaking, until she knew that she was going to be alright. The knife against his throat was unsteady, and Annette gripped his arm so tightly that it was almost as if she needed to hold onto him for her own balance. He would be a fool to not find her dangerous – he’d see her rip veteran Generals to shreds without a second glance – but he’d also known her long enough to feel the fear and pain and pure exhaustion that was radiating off of her. Just looking at her sent his stomach into knots – she seemed smaller than he’d remembered, almost frail, and that afternoon when he greeted her she gave him a look that was so angry and so uncertain and so _defeated_. Felix wanted – needed – her to know that she wasn’t alone in this, that he could help her, that he was here to pay back even a fraction of the kindness she’d given him these past few months. Felix could deal with a dagger; knives at his throat were a typical weekday for him. But he was completely undone by the hurt in Annette’s eyes and the anger in her voice.

_Two._

Felix wasn’t good at words. He knew this. He’d spent most of his life saying the wrong thing, or avoiding saying anything at all. Hell, most of his conversations with _Annette_ seemed to go the wrong way. He could still remember the first time he’d tried to compliment her singing, expecting her to laugh and smile and instead seeing her eyes fill up with angry tears as she ran out of the greenhouse. He was good at one thing, and that was fighting. If they’d just stormed the castle and demanded Annette back, like he wanted, they’d be home by now and he could go back to never saying what he meant without that hurting anyone but himself.

But words were the only option he had right now, so words were what he was going to have to go with.

_One._

“We fight for the same cause, Annette, we always have,” Felix said roughly, keeping very still as he spoke, trying to ignore the shaking blade at his throat and the shaking hand pressed against his arm. “Put down the knife before you hurt somebody.”

Annette faltered for a moment, leaving him more than enough space to twist the dagger out of her hand. Felix stayed still. “I mean, hurting somebody is kind of the point of all this,” she said faintly. Her eyes narrowed, “And what do you even mean by that? I will _never_ side with the Empire, and you – you abandoned our friends, the moment you had enough power to do so!

Felix took the first full breath he’d had in a while. “You honestly believe I’d turn on our allies so quickly? After all we’ve been through?” he asked Annette. She’d stepped back now, leaving inches between them but keeping his dagger trained on him. Felix didn’t move. A cluster of thorns dug into his shoulder. He tried to keep his voice level. “You think I’d stand by that boar as he tore himself and his loved ones apart, only to turn against him the moment he started to remember how to live again?”

“No,” Annette said slowly. Then, “Yes. I don’t know, Felix, how else would you be _here_?”

“You, of all people,” Felix continued, ignoring her question for now, “think that I think so little of my father’s memory that I would destroy it before he even had a proper burial?” He was surprised to feel a sudden, bitter smile cross his face. “I know I was a disappointment to him, but gods, Annette, you think I ever wanted to prove him _right_?”

“That’s certainly what you always wanted me to think,” Annette said sharply, the dagger still pointed at his throat.

“You’re not wrong,” Felix admitted. “But you never believed that about me before.”

Annette’s eyes drilled into him, pinning him against the hedge as effectively as any dagger. “So what do I believe now?” she asked, her voice falling off in the final words.

Felix risked standing up straight, hoping it wouldn’t heighten the tension. Annette didn’t flinch as he stood over her; she lowered the dagger as he rested his hand on her shoulder.

“That I’m your friend,” he said softly. “That I fight for the kingdom. That I’m here to bring you home.”

Annette’s breath caught in back of her throat as she choked back a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a sob. Seeing tears forming at the corners of her eyes, Felix brought his hand up to cup Annette’s face without thinking, and she leaned into his palm instinctively, chasing a kind of warmth and kindness that nobody thought possible of Felix, least of all Felix himself. Annette squeezed her eyes shut, causing the tears to finally fall, and Felix swiped a thumb across her cheek to brush one away. He tried to think of something comforting to say, but he’d run out words once again, so he settled for reaching out with his other hand to lightly clasp Annette’s shoulder, to draw her closer as he ducked his head down towards her –

“Wait! No, stop!” Annette cried, her eyes widening as she waved Felix hands away and took several steps backwards. “Don’t you – I need – I need a moment. I need time to _process_ things.” She waved the knife in front of her; it was more emphasis than for threats but Felix still flinched with each swing. “Don’t distract me, hold on. Just. Stop that.” She didn’t explain what “that” was, but she did wave the knife wildly.

Felix put his hands up in front of him, in equal parts defense and surrender. “I’m stopping, I’m stopping,” he said. “Just stop pointing that knife at me. Actually, can I have it back? It might be easier to process things without the dagger.”

“Absolutely not,” Annette said with another jab. “I might still need it.”

She stalked over to the lone bench by the fountain and flopped down, refusing to make eye contact with Felix and staring at her shoes in bewilderment instead. “I want to know what’s going on; start at the beginning and tell me everything,” she said finally. Looking up, as an afterthought, she added, “You can sit if you want, you know.” She had the sense to pat the bench beside her with the hand that was not holding a knife.

“The beginning,” Felix muttered as he took a seat next to her on the opposite end of the bench. It was too short to allow that much space between the two of them; Felix ruefully suspected that it was designed for couples taking clandestine walks, not . . . whatever disaster situation this was.

“I mean, you’re the beginning of this, right?” Felix finally said, trying to sort through the events of the last month in a way he could translate to Annette. “I woke up one morning and you were gone.”

Felix winced as he said it. He could still clearly remember the last night he saw Annette. He’d been on training grounds, as usual, later than everyone else, as usual, going through the motions of fighting invisible opponents long after the sun had set and the moon was the only real light he had. He was unsurprised when she appeared, balancing an orb of fire above her palm to light her way as she walked across the grounds.

“If I’m done studying, you’re done training. Come on,” she told him. With a wave of her fingers the fire disappeared, leaving them standing in the moonlight as she grabbed his hand and pulled him away. Felix followed listlessly; Annette had seen him cycle through just about every possible emotion following his father’s death, but he was finally starting to reach an equilibrium where he didn’t feel much of anything at all. Annette didn’t ask him to open up; she didn’t try to make him explain what he was feeling or why he wasn’t feeling much of anything at all. She just insisted that, at some point, he put down his sword and went to bed.

Annette hummed to herself when she was in Felix’s room, nosily straightening his books and rearranging his swords as she waited for him to unlace his boots and sit down for the first time all day. At some point over the last few weeks, she had decided that if she could confirm that Felix had put his sword away and taken off his shoes, he was unlikely to sneak back out to the training grounds after she left, and she was content to flitter around his room murmuring nonsense lyrics to herself while she waited. A small part of Felix’s brain was always trying to sort out the lyrics, keeping a running list of topics Annette deemed worthy of song. But that night, he surprised both of them by cutting her off midway through an improvised ballad about trout fishing.

“It’s earlier than usual,” he said suddenly, realizing it wasn’t just that he’d lost track of time. “Did you finally manage to read every book in the library?”

Annette gave him a playful shove, and he moved over to let her sit next to him on his bed. She didn’t take the offer. “Don’t tease me,” she said, a wide smile contradicting her objections. “I just want to get an early start tomorrow. I have some stuff I need to do.”

If Felix had asked a follow-up question, shown any interest at all, this entire mess of a situation might have been avoided. In the weeks following Annette’s disappearance, he’d gone through every excuse he could think of for why he didn’t ask – it was late, he was tired, he was thinking about his father, Annette always had “stuff” she “needed to do”. But these were just excuses. Felix was haunted by the suspicion that he never would have asked what he meant, that he was fundamentally too selfish and self-absorbed to have ever had a chance to save her.

Instead, he had yawned and said, “Get some rest, then,” kicking one of his boots across the floor to show her that he wasn’t going anywhere. She’d flashed him a brilliant smile as she closed the door behind her, and he could hear her resume her song as she wandered away.

That was the last time he saw her, until today.

Felix looked down at Annette, real and alive and impatiently leaning towards him, and he was hit with a fresh wave of guilt at how utterly he had failed the mirror image in his memory. She nodded, clearly waiting for him to continue his explanation.

“You were gone, and it took us a while to figure out why,” he said.

Annette frowned. “I told Mercie,” she said. “She would have known.”

“No, you’re right, we knew where you’d gone pretty fast,” Felix said. “I mean it took us a while to figure out that you weren’t coming back. It wasn’t until the second day that we began to worry. Mercedes was actually _excited_ , she was so happy you were getting to spend time with both of your parents. I think that made it worse for her when you didn’t – it was just a lot for her to process.” Felix quickly cut off that tangent; he didn’t think Annette needed an in-depth description of how Mercedes had burst into tears at the mere mention of her friend, or the ridiculous mental gymnastics she had done to convince herself that the entire situation was her fault, somehow.

Annette caught on anyways; she wasn’t stupid. “Goddess, Mercie, no,” she whispered to herself, her voice trembling slightly on her friend’s name. Felix cautiously put his hand over hers, and she didn’t hold onto him, but she also didn’t pull away.

“It took about a week to get the full story,” Felix continued. “Truth be told, our intelligence network, all of our logistics, have suffered without Gilbe - without your father.” Felix grimaced; it pained him to say anything complimentary about Gustave Dominic, as most of Felix’s conversations with Annette about the man had started or ended with Annette in tears. But it was true. “Byleth’s the best military strategist I’ve ever seen, but she’s shit at the day-to-day stuff,” he explained. “We’ve been floundering without him, so even sorting out what happened took a while. Once we got the full story, though, obviously my – our – first priority was getting you back to Garreg Mach.”

“Okay, but why the whole alliance-against-the-kingdom deal?” Annette asked, wrinkling her nose in concentration. “Wouldn’t it be easier to, like, break into the castle at midnight and climb into my bedroom window and sneak out under the cover of darkness to where your horse and half an army waits to carry us to safety?

Felix blinked at her for a moment. “ _That’s_ the easier plan?” he asked finally.

Annette shrugged. “I read it in a book this week. It worked pretty well for them.”

“To be fair, I wanted to lead a force to break down the front gates, which I guess is kind of a similar idea?” Felix said, trying to buy into Annette’s nascent potential as a tactician. “I still think that would have been a better plan. Byleth was actually the one who thought of using my leverage as the new leader of Fraldarius territory to try to infiltrate Castle Dominic under the cover of negotiations.”

“Did Byleth come up with the courtship idea?” Annette asked, surprised. In many regards, their professor was a singularly unromantic woman, and she was truly baffled by the courtship rituals that the nobles among the Blue Lions – mostly Ingrid – were constantly having to navigate.

“I think that was Sylvain,” Felix said.

“That makes more sense.”

“Anyways,” Felix said, “Once we had the plan it was just a matter of planting enough rumors that I had left the army so that I could feasibly make an offer to your uncle. And Byleth spent a good amount of time giving me intelligence that's a good balance of proprietary and ultimately useless, so I can effectively ‘betray’ the kingdom’s army without actually giving away any serious information.”

“So your fight with Dimitri, it was staged?” Annette asked.

Felix glanced at her sharply. “Where’d you hear about that?” he asked.

“House Dominic has spies, too, you know,” Annette said, narrowing her eyes at how defensive Felix got. “That’s how you hurt your arm, right? Is the injury real?”

“It’s real. It’s healing. Don’t worry about it,” Felix said, leaning slightly away from Annette. “Damn boar doesn’t know his own strength,” he muttered to himself as he shielded his arm from Annette’s prying eyes. He knew from experience that she wielded white magic with same reckless abandon that she wielded stolen daggers, and he was not about to have her waste her energy on a wound that would heal on its own time.

“You’re not lying to me, right?” Annette said, her voice sounding suddenly small as he pulled away from her. “If you’re actually siding with Cornelia, I _will_ stab you on our wedding night.”

Felix laughed despite himself. “I promise I won’t let it get to a wedding night, Annette. You only have to pretend you want to marry me for a week. Maybe less. That’s how long your uncle thinks I’m staying here, for the initial negotiation talks, and I’m sure that’ll be enough time to figure out an escape plan.”

He looked over at Annette, realizing he hadn’t given her the promise she wanted. She stared at her shoes again, absently kicking the dirt. Felix tucked a finger under her chin and brought her eyes up to meet his.

“And I promise I’m not lying to you. I promise I won’t lie to you,” he said. “I’ve told so many lies to get here that I’m starting to forget who I am, but that’s something we can hold onto.”

Annette stared at him for a painstaking moment, unblinking and barely breathing, and for a moment Felix worried he’d said the wrong thing once more. But, leaning away from him to break contact, she solemnly held out the dagger to him. Not as a threat, but as a peace offering.

“I’ll hold you to that,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Felix took the dagger and pocketed it, concealing it once more within the lining of his jacket.

“I’m sorry about, um, earlier,” Annette added, her voice slightly sheepish. “I couldn’t stand the idea of you . . . being someone I couldn’t trust. Of you hurting our friends. But the knife was maybe a bit much.”

“When did you take up pick-pocketing, anyways?” Felix asked. “I didn’t think that was a part of the standard mage curriculum. ”

“Ashe taught me,” Annette explained. “We both got stuck with night watch and we were pretty bored.

“I always knew you two were up to no good,” Felix said. “No one can actually spend that much time studying. Any other devious tricks I should know about?”

Annette frowned. “He tried to teach me how to pick locks, but I was rubbish at it. That requires actual skill. Picking pockets is just about misdirection.”

Felix thought back to Annette leaning up against him, tracing her fingers up his back as she giggled. For a glorious, stupid half an hour, Felix had actually believed she was just happy he was there. Misdirection, indeed – he’d spent a good 15 seconds just trying to figure out what to do with his hands and another 45 trying to remember how words worked.

“You’re a terrifying woman, Annette Dominic,” he said.

At this, Annette finally smiled. “Thank you,” she said. “I try my best.” She looked up at him. “Can I give you a hug if I promise not to steal your sword?”

Felix nodded silently and slid his arm around her shoulder. Annette threw both of her arms around him with an enthusiasm that caught him off guard. Felix wasted another 15 seconds trying to remember what he’d decided was the right thing to do with his hands. But then he realized Annette wasn’t actually hugging him, not in the proper sense of the word. Instead she pressed her cheek against his chest, her eyes shut tight, and clung to him with both hands as if she was afraid he might disappear.

“I really am sorry I almost tried to kill you,” she mumbled against him. “I'm glad you’re here.”

Felix pulled his arm tighter around her, hoping that would indicate that she didn’t have to let go until she wanted to. “It happens all the time, don’t worry,” he said, which wasn’t exactly true, a few particularly bad fights with Ingrid notwithstanding. He added after a moment, “I'm glad I’m here, too.”

Annette’s grip was a little too tight for Felix to forget the reality of the situation and pretend that they were a normal couple watching the sunset together. But, selfishly, foolishly, he let himself take in the sunset for a moment, watching the sky painted pink and orange as the sun finally fell below the hedges. He told himself he was giving Annette the time to process the situation that she had asked him for. He told himself it was for her sake.

He’d promised not to lie to her. He could lie to himself as much as he needed.

He missed Annette as soon as she broke away from him. “Sorry,” she mumbled, for no particular reason, rubbing her eyes as she sat up straight again. “I’m back now. I’m okay.” She looked at the sun setting, taking in how much time had passed. “Should we go inside? It’s getting dark,” she said.

“Wait,” said Felix. “I'm not sure if we’ll have many chances to speak together alone. Let’s set a timeline for getting out a here.” He stood up, pacing back in forth in front of the bench as he thought out loud. “We’ll want to wait until the battalion leaves; when they find out we’re gone it’ll be easier for two to outride them instead of two dozen. I’m thinking not tomorrow, but the next day, might be our best bet. Early afternoon, so they don’t notice we’re gone until dinner. I can borrow a horse, I’m sure, but you’ll have to help me with the grounds here – is there any part of the surrounding wall that doesn’t have much structural integrity?”

“I set a part of the outer wall on fire when I first got here,” Annette offered. “I could do that again.”

“Perfect,” Felix said. “You can show me that tomorrow; your uncle dropped about a dozen hints about me taking you on walks so I guess that’s a good enough cover story. We meet on either side of it, break it down, and get the hell out of here.”

“It’s a good starting plan,” Annette agreed. “But won’t we need two horses – one for my father?”

Felix stopped dead in his tracks.

“Your father?” he repeated.

“Yes?” Annette asked. “Gustave? Gilbert? Whatever you want to call him.”

“Your father is . . . he’s here?” Felix said.

“Of course he’s here, where else would he be?” Annette said. Her face was flushing red as the color was draining out of Felix’s cheeks. “You _knew_ he came along with me; you said yourself the army is falling apart without him!” Felix couldn’t believe that there was a note of pride in Annette’s voice at this detail; her sense of loyalty to a man who treated her so poorly never failed to surprise him.

“We’d assumed they’d sent him to Fhirdiad. Our spies couldn’t track him, only you, so it made the most sense that you’d been split up,” Felix explained. He was kicking himself, inwardly. Why wasn’t this the first question he’d asked her? Why hadn’t they found out about Gilbert’s location before Felix left for Dominic? “He wasn’t in the main hall when I arrived,” he added defensively.

“Well of _course_ he wasn’t, Felix, he’s being kept in the dungeons,” Annette said, as if this was something Felix should have already known. “He’s a major traitor to the Adrestian Empire, my uncle isn’t just going to let him run around the castle.”

“He lets _you_ run around the castle. _You’re_ a major traitor to the empire,” Felix pointed out.

“Yes, but I’m not important!” Annette said, standing now, her hands balled into fists.

“You’re _twice_ as important as Gilbert fucking Pronislav,” Felix snapped, taking a step closer to her.

“How dare you compliment me in that tone of voice,” Annette said angrily, “And leave my father out of this.”

“Your father is the _topic_ of this _conversation_ ,” Felix said, trying to keep his voice even after Annette called him out for raising it. “I kind of can’t leave him out of this.”

“So what are we going to do about him?” Annette asked, her tone slightly shifting from anger to panic.

“I . . . I don’t know.” Felix finally admitted the inevitable, that Gustave Dominic was a contingency he hadn’t planned for. Annette look at him, sighed, and sat back down on the bench, putting her head in her hands. Felix almost wanted to go back to arguing; it was better than seeing all the fight going out of her so quickly.

He sat on the bench and put an arm around her. “Listen, we’ll figure something out,” he said quietly. “Now that we know he’s here, once we get back to Garreg Mach, you can help Byleth form a strategy to come back for him. We could try that cover-of-darkness plan you had, that sounded pretty good.”

“I’m not leaving without him,” Annette mumbled into her hands.

Felix frowned, “We can get out of here, Annette, I was sent here to get you out of here.”

“I’m not,” Annette repeated, her words muffled by her hands.

“I’m sure once Dimitri knows Gilbert is here, he’ll authorize the army –”

“I’m not going back without him,” Annette said one more time, finally raising her head to meet Felix’s gaze. Her eyes gleamed with a ferocity he’d rarely seen before. “It’s my fault he’s here; the army is falling apart without him. How can I face them if I don’t save him, Felix? Without him, I’m just a reminder of my failure.”

A vivid memory of a snippet of conversation flashed into Felix’s mind: _You’re just going to abandon him? This man kept your entire army together while you talked to ghosts, and you’re leaving him to rot in some dungeon?_

He was a hypocrite. He pushed it out of the way. It wasn’t important right now. “No one thinks that about you, Annette,” he said, his voice low and intense. “We just want you to be home, and safe. There’s no strings attached to that.”

“Felix,” Annette said, as if he hadn’t spoken at all. “What if we leave, and they do send him to Fhirdiad? What if they execute him, because I escaped?” She clasped her hands against the fabric of her dress to give her something to hold onto. “I also don’t know where my mother is right now; if I leave without her, who knows how Cornelia will retaliate.”

“Wait, we also have to find your mother?” Felix asked, mentally kicking himself for the insensitivity of the question as soon as he said it as Annette shot him a murderous glare.

“I have to think about people other than myself, is what I mean, Felix,” she said. “I can’t just leave, it’s not enough if it’s just me. I can’t be the reason my family is destroyed. I’ve already been so . . . selfish.” She paused before the last word, finally landing on it with a long, shuddering breath.

“Okay,” Felix said. He grasped one of her hands, which tightened around his fingers in panicked desperation. “Okay,” he repeated, pulling Annette closer and bringing the hand around her shoulder up to stroke her hair. “We’ll figure out a way to save him, don’t worry,” he said, trying to keep his voice low and calm as Annette clung to him, her breathing unsteady. “I won’t leave without you; you won’t leave without him; so we all leave together.”

“I have no idea how to get to him, Felix,” Annette said miserably. “The dungeon guards won’t let me near him, and even if they did, the cells are too complicated for a simple lockpick.”

“They won’t let you near him?” Felix asked. “You’re his daughter, they won’t let you at least talk to him?”

“There was . . . an incident,” Annette said vaguely. She blushed at this, but Felix was relieved to see color returning to her face at all.

“Gods, Annette, is there anyone you _haven’t_ threatened to stab around here?”

“That’s only _three_ times,” Annette said. “You of all people don’t get to lecture me about not relying on swords to solve my problems.”

“Okay, listen,” Felix said, trying to focus the conversation back to the problem at hand. “We’ll figure this out, okay? We just need to figure out how to talk to him, and figure out how to break open the doors.” He paused, and added. “Maybe we could solve these two problems together, actually. If we demanded an audience with Gilbert, had some reason we needed to talk to him, maybe they’d let him out to talk to us.”

“Short of my wedding day or my death bed, I can’t think of a reason my uncle would even let me speak to my father, much less let him out of his cell,” Annette said bitterly.

A vague idea tugged at the back of Felix’s head.

“I guess I could try faking my own death,” Annette muttered to herself. “They might let him come to the funeral.”

Before Felix could decide if that plan was worse than his own idea – which he admitted was pretty bad – he was cut off by a loud voice, calling through the maze.

“Lord Fraldarius? Lord Fraldarius? I wasn’t able to find someone named ‘Sylvain,’ did I hear you wrong?”

“He’s back,” Annette said, the color draining from her face. “There’s never enough _time_ , why did I waste time _hugging_ you.”

“Listen,” Felix hurriedly whispered to Annette. “We can make this work. We either find a way to break your father out, or we convince your uncle to let him out.”

“I’ve been trying that for a month, Felix,” Annette hissed back. “You think you have a strategy I haven’t tried yet?”

“Did you mean ‘Phillip’?” the guard called out again. “I found a guy named Phillip, he seemed to already know what you were talking about, though.”

“I’ll figure something out,” Felix said to Annette, a little defensively.

“You’re only here for a week,” she reminded him.

“I’ll buy us more time.”

“ _How_ , Felix?” Annette said, grabbing his other hand in frustration. “How are we supposed to pull any of this off?”

The guard’s footsteps were just around the corner now; the top of his helmet peeked over the hedge, one lane over.

Felix tightened his grip on Annette’s hands and looked her dead in the eye. “We improvise,” he said in one final, frantic whisper.

As the guard came around the corner, Felix had already pivoted off the bench, landing on one knee in front of Annette. She tried to cover her mouth, in surprise or perhaps in horror, but Felix held on fast to her hands. The last light of the sun cast her hair in a fiery halo around her and glinted off the hilt of Felix’s (mostly) ceremonial sword.

“Annette Fantine Dominic,” he said, his voice finally loud enough to carry over the fountain and through the maze. “Will you marry me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve talked about “siding with the Empire” so much that I think this legally qualifies as Star Wars fan fiction at this point.
> 
> I tried to write the flashback in past perfect tense and it was VERY BAD. It’s just in past tense now. To make up for my lack of grammatical imagination, I have included 200000000 too many semicolons.
> 
> Anyways, we finally have an engagement! Well, more like half an engagement; technically I guess Annette has to agree to the plan. I feel like this chapter is finally living up to my promises of melodrama, in that everyone is feeling the most of every emotion possible. As I say, we have fun here.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who had nice things to say about the last chapter! I think (???) this chapter ends in a little less of a cliffhanger, in that nobody is about to die, but it’s always nice to know that people actually want to read the next thing you’re writing. Wishing everyone out there a good weekend! Don’t threaten to stab people in order to solve your problems!


	5. Annette Has Some Requests

Annette sat across from her uncle at the dinner table. The food had been cleared and the table seemed absurdly long with just the two of them, facing each other. Felix had tactfully disappeared, to the training ground or to his room or to speak to his soldiers, and Annette found herself alone with her uncle for the first time since that morning. Right now, that morning seemed like weeks ago. Her uncle took a long sip from his cup of tea before putting it down and looking at her again.

“Well,” Gérald Dominic said finally. “He’s certainly efficient, I’ll give him that.”

Annette tried to focus on pouring her own cup of tea. Efficient was one word for it. She had stumbled through the three hours following Felix’s proposal in a blind confusion, but Felix seemed to have arrived at a singular solution, and he was more than willing to pull her along with him. She stirred two lumps of sugar into her tea, trying to pull the evening into focus. At the moment she felt like everything was a jumble of disjointed moments: Felix turning to admonish the guard for “ruining the moment” as soon as he appeared from around the corner; the authoritative way he snaked his arm around her waist and pulled her past the guard and back towards the castle; the sheepish, almost apologetic way he dropped his hands and stepped away from her as soon as they were out of the maze and away from the guard; his frantic and hurried whispers as he tried to explain that this plan was a _good idea_ , that it had really been her idea if she thought about it, that plenty of people got engaged after three hours and no one would think this was unusual. And most maddeningly, Felix’s low, insistent voice contrasted against her uncle’s gruff grumble, neither of which she could actually understand as she stood with her ear pressed to the door of her uncle’s study rather than changing for dinner like her uncle suggested.

The problem, Annette realized, adding a third sugar cube to her teacup because she deserved it after today, was that everything she could focus on from the past three hours centered on Felix himself, and very little of her brain had deemed it necessary to listen to and understand his actual plan. Which she still wasn’t sure was a good plan. But she wasn’t about to let Baron Dominic know that.

“They say King Loog proposed to his queen within three hours of meeting her,” she said to her uncle. She’d actually read about four different conflicting timelines in the last three weeks alone – one particularly unreliable source suggested fifteen minutes – but her uncle didn’t need to know that. “Perhaps this is Duke Fraldarius’s way of honoring our shared history.”

Gérald stared at her, no doubt trying to decide if she was mocking him. She gave him an insincere smile, stirring her tea to ensure the sugar dissolved properly. He did not smile back. “I’m not sure such attachment to the history of the kingdom is in your best interest right now, Annette,” he remarked.

“Perhaps not,” Annette said, taking a sip of her tea. It was way too hot and she had to work to avoid coughing. Regaining her composure, she added, “But I thought we were here to discuss an attachment to House Fraldarius.”

“I suppose we are,” her uncle said. “I’ll be frank with you, Annette, his terms are generous. He’s promised troops, information, supplies – not to mention his own fearsome skill as a commander and fighter. It’s an alliance I’m sure Cornelia and the Empress would smile on.” He frowned. “The only thing he asks for in return is your hand in marriage.”

“I guess I’m quite a catch!” Annette said brightly. Her uncle continued to frown, making the smile on her face feel foolish and out of place.

“It would seem to be an advantageous match, but I will admit his conditions are unusual,” Gérald continued. “I told him that you could stay here as my guest for long as the war continues, but he’s insisting that he’ll wait to join the front lines until after you are married and settled as the Duchess of Fraldarius.”

“So if I married him, I would leave Dominic?” Annette clarified.

Her uncle nodded. “So he requests. He’s dashed difficult to reason with. I think he thinks we could put together a wedding by the end of the week.”

Annette raised her eyebrows. “Could we?”

Her uncle gave her a look that said in no uncertain terms that she was smarter than that. “We’ve settled on a date a month from tomorrow, should we finalize the match,” he said, not deigning to actually answer her question. “I’m afraid it won’t be a wedding out of one of your books, on that timeline.”

“I’ve read of many simple weddings, Uncle,” Annette said. “I assure you that they can be as romantic as the grand ones.”

“He didn’t even bother to bring you a ring,” her uncle grumbled. “Careless boy.”

“Perhaps . . . he didn’t realize he was going to propose, until . . . he saw me?” Annette suggested, which was technically speaking a correct assessment, but which sounded ridiculous as she said it.

Her uncle looked at her skeptically for a moment, but his rough features softened into a wry smile. “Was that also the case for King Loog?” he asked, surprisingly kind.

Annette smiled back. She tried to remember the last time she’d smiled at her uncle and meant it. “Depends on the source,” she said. “Sometimes.”

“That’s usually how it goes, with Loog,” Gérald said quietly. He poured himself more tea. “Well,” he added, refocusing on Annette. “At least one mystery is solved.”

“Is it?” Annette asked, taking a smaller sip of tea to better regulate the temperature.

“Certainly,” he continued, stoic. “From the moment he entered the castle it was obvious the real reason he was making you this offer.”

Annette actually did choke on her tea at this. The good news was the coughing fit probably hid the look of horror in her eyes – Annette had never had much of a poker face.

“The real – I’m sorry – ” she said, grabbing a napkin and coughing into it. “The real reason?” It sounded so insidious, even as she said it. She floundered for a fake “real” reason that she could supply that wouldn’t end with Felix joining her father in the castle dungeons. She suddenly remembered the obvious answer. “You mean his arm injury?” she asked, trying to keep her voice as stoic and matter-of-fact as her uncle’s. “He told me he got it in a fight with the prince; that confirms what your sources told us.”

Her uncle gave her a pitying look, as if he were speaking to a child who had been caught lying. “No Annette, I don’t mean his sword injury,” he said. “I’m not a fool; I have two eyes just like anyone else.”

“I – I’m sorry,” Annette stammered. “I’m not sure what you – ” she cast a desperate look towards the door, wondering if she could make a run for it, tell Felix they’d been found out and that he needed to escape.

Her uncle let out a breath. Annette braced for impact. “I never married, Annette, you know this,” he said gravely. “But that doesn’t mean that I don’t know what it is . . . to love someone. I’m not so old that I no longer remember what that felt like.”

“Oh,” said Annette. Then, after a pause, she added: “ _Oh_.”

“It’s obvious within minutes that the boy is absolutely smitten,” her uncle continued. “Just the way he looked at you, anyone could see it.”

“Yes, I . . . definitely agree,” Annette said slowly. This was a lie. Frankly, Felix had looked much the same as he always did. That had been her primary frustration when she first saw him, in fact – she had expected some secret meaning, some fundamental change, and had instead gotten just . . . Felix. The same as always. Meanwhile, her uncle – her unfeeling, taciturn uncle – was here reading entire arcs of epic poetry into Felix scowling at her slightly less. Maybe, Annette concluded, she had been so focused on ascertaining if Felix was a traitor or not that she hadn’t noticed him pretending to be more interested in her than usual. Perhaps Felix was a better actor than she gave him credit for.

“The boy’s much stupider than I thought, let me be clear. These are terrible reasons to make a woman an offer,” her uncle added, cutting into Annette’s mental calculations. “But it would be a good match for our house, so may the goddess continue to bless him with such sentimentality.”

“Your own sentimentality continues to sparkle, Uncle,” Annette said dryly. She had known him too long to take too much offense at him – he meant to be practical, not tactless, but tactlessness was in his nature.

She might have imagined it, but it was possible he blushed behind his large beard. “I don’t mean to discount you, Annette,” he added. “This would be a good match for you, not just Dominic as a whole. Fraldarius siding with the Dukedom would no doubt bring this war to a much-needed close; he may not be a Duke forever, but I’m sure the Empress would ensure that he became a very powerful man.”

Annette shivered despite herself. To hear her uncle speak so casually of the destruction of her homeland – of _his_ homeland – was chilling, even if she believed with all her heart that Faerghus would survive. Once again, he chose to be practical above anything else.

He misinterpreted her shudder. “Yes, of course,” he muttered. “I realize young ladies don’t always prioritize political standing when they evaluate offers of marriage.”

Annette returned her attention to her tea to avoid the impulse to correct him.

Gérald took another sip of his tea, his eyes trained on Annette as she watched him in silence. He set his cup down again. “I’m certain of his feelings for you. But how do you feel about him?”

Annette froze, her teacup midway to her lips. She placed it back down on the saucer with a louder clatter than she’d intended. “I told you what I know about him this morning, Uncle,” she said stiffly. “He’s not an easy person to assess.”

But her uncle was shaking his head. “I don’t mean for political purposes, Annette,” he said, almost sadly. “Put that aside for a moment. I know . . . I know you don't believe me, but I do want you to be happy.”

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” Annette said before she could stop herself.

Her uncle gave her a disapproving look. “Think in the long term, Annette. Think of your own welfare, if you can’t think of Dominic’s. Do you think you could love this man?” he asked.

Annette clutched her teacup so tightly it was a wonder it didn’t shatter. The chamomile still burned her tongue as she took a sip, trying to decide on an answer. She wasn’t sure what answer she was supposed to give to support the fiction she and Felix were rapidly creating. Would answering yes make her appear too eager, raise her uncle’s suspicions, and reveal that Felix was still loyal to the kingdom? But if she answered no, would her uncle refuse Felix’s proposal on her behalf and send him away, taking all her chances of freedom with him?

But even if she stripped away all the lies and performances and cover stories, Annette still wouldn’t have known how to reply. Holding on to Felix that afternoon had felt like safety and assurance and belonging in a way she’d forgotten was possible. Maybe it was just that she had been so alone for the past month; maybe anyone could have reached out and grabbed her hand and made her feel much the same way. But when she’d buried her head against his shoulder and told him “I’m glad you’re here” earlier that afternoon, what she had actually thought was “I’m glad it’s _you_.” Still, it would be utterly, impossibly foolish of her to ever forget that Felix was here on a mission, that he represented the Blue Lions, not himself. He was here to bring her back to Garreg Mach and to undo the collateral damage she had caused with her thoughtlessness. Admitting she wanted more than that was absurd, it was wrong, it was selfish. It wasn’t an answer she wanted to give.

“I . . . I don’t know,” she finally said instead. Annette owed her uncle nothing after the way he’d treated her and her father, but she was taken aback when she looked up and saw that he looked hurt, at least slightly, by her lack of response. There was a certain irony, Annette realized, that this was the most honest she was ever going to be with her uncle, and it was the one answer he assumed to be a lie.

He sighed deeply. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, in the end. Even in the best of circumstances, our house isn’t in the position to arrange marriages by emotion,” he said, returning to the solemn and stern strategist she was familiar with. “And these past six years have not been the best of circumstances.” He paused, and gave his niece a final look of sympathy. “But I won’t force you to accept his offer, Annette. Our house can survive without Fraldarius patronage.”

It was a fine time for her uncle to decide to emphasize her personal autonomy, but Annette didn’t see much use in pointing this out. She took a deep breath and asked a question she already knew the answer to.

“If I don’t accept this offer,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. “Will you let me leave our territory and return to fight with Prince Dimitri?”

“You know I can’t do that,” her uncle said sharply.

“So my choices are to marry Duke Fraldarius or remain here indefinitely?”

Gérald Dominic frowned, but could find no counter. “That would seem to be the case,” he finally admitted.

“Then I think,” Annette said, “that I will marry the duke.”

Her uncle narrowed his eyes at her with a look of suspicious realization. “He won’t be any more likely to let you return to this ridiculous business at Garreg Mach, Annette,” he said, his voice already taking on the lecturing tone Annette was intimately familiar with from her adolescence. “I can’t imagine his castle guards will take kindly to you attempting to threaten your way out. And even if you find a way to leave, they’re not going to let the wife of a defector rejoin their ranks. This is not a way back to the rebel army, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Annette blinked at her uncle. He didn’t seem to particularly like Felix, but he had fully accepted that he was a traitor to the kingdom. Perhaps one contributed to the other.

“Thank you for the reminder, uncle. I’ll still marry him.” Annette said flatly. Her voice softened slightly as she added. “There are worse things in life than marrying a man that evidently loves you.”

Her uncle nodded quietly. “So you do care for him,” he said, more to himself than to Annette. Annette wondered what he saw in _her_ face, to conclude such a thing, but she didn’t ask. “I’ll give him my blessing,” he added. “I’m sure he’ll be delighted; let’s hope he can wait longer than two weeks for a wedding date.”

“Will it be a complicated affair to plan?” Annette asked. “A wartime wedding seems like it needs to be simple by necessity.”

“It's a blasted contradiction, is what it is,” Baron Dominic grumbled. “Obviously the best course of action would be to declare a courtship until the war has ended and have the wedding then. But the boy was quite insistent before dinner that he will not provide assistance to the Dukedom until after a wedding has taken place.”

Annette vowed to corner Felix at a later date and demand to know his negotiation tactics. Until then, she had her own list of demands, but she did not have Felix’s enviable luxury of leverage.

Sending a prayer to the goddess and half a dozen more to any saints that came to mind, Annette took a deep breath and spoke. “I have requests for the wedding, uncle,” she said. “Things I want.” He didn't respond immediately, and she fumbled to fill the silence. “It’s my wedding, I think I should have some say in it. I only get one chance.”

Her uncle, to her surprise, nodded at this. “Yes, yes, of course,” he said absently. “What’s on your mind?”

Annette plowed ahead; there was no turning back now. “I want my mother to be here for the ceremony,” she said. “I want my father to give me away.”

“Yes, of course Fantine will be there,” her uncle said, unbothered by any of these suggestions. “I must write to her tomorrow, I suppose.” Annette wanted to press on her second request, but didn’t want to press her luck. She continued her list instead.

“I want two kinds of cake at the wedding reception,” she said. This wasn’t connected to any larger plan that Felix had whispered frantically in her ear as they left the maze and waited for an audience with her uncle. Annette just figured that was something she would probably ask for, if this were a real wedding. Her uncle nodded, clearly unconcerned with reception menus. She bit her lip and added a final request. “And I want Mercie to be there; I want her to stand with me during the ceremony.”

Her uncle looked up at this. “You’ve mentioned this friend before – Mercie,” he said. “She was with you at the school of sorcery?”

“Yes,” Annette said. “Mercedes von Martriz. She’s my best friend,” she added, although such information was not particularly useful to her uncle.

“von Martriz,” her uncle said with a frown. “I recognize that name. Adrestian. Would she have to travel from the Empire?”

Annette shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “No, uncle,” she said. “She’d be traveling from Garreg Mach.”

Baron Dominic gave her a look that wasn’t angry, just disappointed. “Annette,” he said.

“She’s my _best friend_.”

“Under no circumstances.”

“Can I at least send her a letter informing her of my engagement?” Annette asked. She’d never had any chance of Mercie actually attending the wedding (if there was indeed to be a wedding), but this seemed feasible.

“Perhaps Duke Fraldarius will have no objection to you sending a letter announcing your marriage,” her uncle replied coldly. “But I have no intention of needlessly sending our messengers into enemy territory.”

Annette slumped in her chair. This was generally how negotiations went with her uncle – which was to say, they didn’t go at all. This did not bode well for the one legitimate request on her litany of demands; the only aspect of this so-called marriage that actually mattered. Still, that was the only remaining request that needed clarity. She had to return to it.

“And my father,” she asked, hoping it wasn’t too obvious that her hands were shaking. “He’ll walk me down the aisle, yes? I can say goodbye to him before I leave Dominic?”

Her uncle took a long sip from his cup, finishing off the last of his tea. “There may be . . . complications, to such a request, Annette,” he finally said.

“You would deny your own brother a chance to see his only daughter on her wedding day?” Annette said, putting all the horror and shock into her voice that she could manage. Her uncle wasn’t the only one who could display acute disappointment.

She needn’t have bothered with theatrics.

Her uncle sighed and closed his eyes, clearly wishing he wasn’t having this conversation. “Of course I would let him see you, Annette,” he said. “It’s just . . . well, I think you’ll have to ask him yourself.”

***

If Annette had known that she could have gotten to the dungeons to see her father just by getting engaged, she would have thrown herself any available bachelor much earlier than this. But, she decided, she couldn’t really blame herself for not taking such a roundabout path from the start. Swords were much more to the point.

She would have laughed at her own pun if the stairway to the dungeon wasn’t so dark, and cold, and generally cheerless. There hadn’t been much use for the dungeons when she first lived at the castle – there was the occasional criminal being transported from one town to another, or a dispute in Dominic lands that turned unexpectedly nasty during negotiations, or a band of thieves waiting to stand trial. But for the most part, Annette had mostly thought of the dungeons as an oddity, and they remained empty much of her time there. During wartime, however, her uncle had use of them, especially after he declared an allegiance to the Empire and was responsible for hosting their prisoners as well as his own. Annette wondered vaguely where her father belonged – was he a prisoner of the Empire or a prisoner of Dominic? In either case, the literal descent down the long, damp staircase was an overly apt reminder of how dire his situation was. Annette generally tried not to dwell on how much of this situation was her fault, but when there was nothing to hear but her own echoing footsteps, it was hard to avoid.

Her footsteps at least shared acoustic space with her uncle tonight, as she followed him down below the castle. Baron Dominic did not look at his niece as they walked – perhaps the physical reality of the dungeon caused him to reflect on his own responsibilities for the state of his family. Or perhaps he just didn’t have anything left to say to her. His face betrayed nothing as he walked, so either was possible. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, waiting for the guard to unlock the main door and let them into the rows of cells. He looked at Annette, finally.

“Perhaps you should wait here and let me talk to him first, Annette,” he said, with a look that told her this was not simply a suggestion. “It might help if I give him . . . necessary context on the details of your engagement.”

Annette decided this was, once again, not a hill to die on. Nodding quietly, she took a seat on the bottom step, too tired from the day to care about the dust and the dirt surrounding her. Her uncle raised an eyebrow at this, but disappeared into the dungeon without saying anything.

Annette sat with her chin in her hands, silently wondering what her uncle could be saying to her father that she couldn’t tell him herself. The guard made it difficult to practice her favorite art of unsuccessfully listening in on conversations, so she just listened to the rumble of low voices, barely audible from the other side of the door. The guard looked at her silently, his expression impossible to read. Annette finally had enough of being stared at, and she looked back at him, daring him to look away. He did not.

“Did I threaten you with fire spells a couple of weeks ago?” she asked him. It was the only conversation starter she could think of off the top of her head – the weather hadn’t been very interesting that week.

He shook his head. “No, that was Gregor. We moved him to the day shift after that incident,” he said. “Told him it would be safer. You came at me with that giant sword, remember?”

“That’s right,” she said. “I stole it from a suit of armor. Did it hurt much when I hit you? I don’t know how to use a sword very well.”

He coughed politely. “I was more surprised than anything else. I’m impressed you could lift it.”

Annette beamed at him, taking the meager praise where she could get it. “I’ve trained a bit in axes,” she explained.

“That makes sense,” he said. “Don’t bring any of those down here. I’m not supposed to kill you but it might hurt if we had to have an actual duel.”

“Or maybe I’d win,” Annette said cheerfully. He didn’t smile back this time. Feeling this was a poor end to the conversation, she added, “It wasn’t personal; I hope you didn’t take it personally. It’s my father in there, you see.”

“Yes, I’ve heard,” the guard said. His voice too casual to be sympathetic, but he didn’t seem particularly angry with her, considering the unfortunate nature of their first meeting. “Your early conversations with him were . . . very depressing.”

“It’s not polite to eavesdrop,” Annette said, annoyed.

“It’s not polite to threaten people with swords,” he countered.

“I guess I can’t argue with that,” Annette said after a pause. When the guard didn’t reply, she returned to staring at her hands. She’d written a song about this dungeon once, she suddenly remembered. What were the lyrics? Had she actually found a rhyme for “dungeon”? It was a ridiculously cheerful tune, she remembered that much. If she had to take another stab at it, she might go more the route of a dirge.

The guard spoke before she could start humming a new composition. “Did he say you’re engaged?” he asked, jerking his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the Baron. His manner of address was deeply disrespectful, which Annette approved of.

“Yes,” she said. “My fiancé arrived this afternoon. He’s staying at the castle.”

The guard nodded. “Congratulations, then. I hope your engagement is swift and your wedding plans go smoothly.”

Annette smiled at him again. “That’s very kind of you,” she said.

“Kindness has nothing to do with it,” he said bluntly. “Night watch was so much easier before you got here. I’ll send you a wedding gift anywhere you want so long as you promise to leave.”

Annette had the overwhelming desire to stick her tongue out at him, but stopped herself. She noticed his grin fade away before he could hide it properly, though. She wondered if there was an alternative timeline somewhere where the two of them could have been friends.

She didn’t have time to ponder this before the door opened and her uncle gestured for her to follow him. She turned to bid goodbye to the guard, but he had melted back into his straight-backed, glassy-eyed position next to the door. It was as if they’d never spoken at all. She sighed, and followed her uncle to her father’s cell.

Most of the cells in the dungeon were empty right now. The main fighting was south enough that prisoners of war were being sent to the Adrestian Empire, and Dominic’s resources were so meager in the past few years that her uncle could not afford to adequately survey and protect the surrounding villages from bandit activity. It was an odd combination of peace and war that left their castle both isolated and unprotected. It wouldn't last.

While many of the cells allowed for multiple prisoners and were fully visible through long sets of bars, her father was tucked away in a solitary cell in the corner, with an actual door. Annette had never had much luck seeing through the bars at the top of the door to see what the living conditions were like, and generally her father had not bothered to stand up to peer through the bars, so it had been hit or miss whether she saw his face when she visited him. But tonight she saw him clearly through the small barred window as her uncle led her to the cell door and backed away, standing a respectful distance apart while still blatantly listening to their conversation. Gustave was thinner than she’d remembered, and the grey was spreading through his hair, which was frizzing around the edges of his usually neat ponytail. Annette hated seeing him like this; a selfish part of her wished she hadn’t come at all. She quickly crushed the thought – seeing her father had been her motivation for so long that flinching at the sight of him seemed like a betrayal to her very sense of self, not just an obvious cruelty to her family.

“Annette,” her father, his voice hoarse from a lack of use. “Annette, how could you do this?”

Annette hadn’t expected this. She’d grown used to her father’s dismissals, his disappearances, the vague way his eyes skated around her to find Dimitri in a crowded room. Pure, outright disappointment was new. She felt a needless sense of guilt as he looked at her – she had to take a conscious moment to remind herself that she wasn’t actually marrying Felix, that Felix hadn’t actually left the kingdom, and that her father was reacting the same way she had, having the same details she had. Steeling her resolve, she pushed her feelings of guilt aside and stepped closer to the door.

“Uncle Gérald has informed you of my engagement, Father?” she asked, looking up at him with wide blue eyes that eerily matched his own.

“Annette, you cannot do this,” Gustave said, his voice desperate in a way she hadn’t heard before. “I know things look bad right now, but to throw away your life on that . . . that absolute swine masquerading as a nobleman.”

Annette blinked in surprise. She’d never realized her father was such a poet. “Felix is Rodrigue Fraldarius’s son, Father,” she reminded him. “The two of you always got along so well. I thought you would be happy –”

“Do not spit on Rodrigue’s name so casually,” her father roared, the effect of his yell only heighted by how rasped and useless his voice was. “It’s bad enough that his son spits on his memory.” He drew a deep breath as Annette took a step back from him, trying not to cower under his words. He started again, his voice more subdued. “Think of your loyalty to the kingdom, Annette. Your loyalty to the crown. Think of what you owe Prince Dimitri. _He’s_ your liege, not this preening, arrogant child play-acting at politics.”

Annette felt a string in her heart snap at this – though oddly, not because of his insults towards Felix. After all, she’d called Felix much worse and she actually liked him.

“Don’t presume you know what I felt for Dimitri,” she said, stepping closer to the door and craning her neck to look her father in the eye. “I’m not like you, Father. I didn’t serve Dimitri out of some ideal of the kingdom, out of some servile duty. Dimitri was my friend – he was the closest thing to a brother I’ll ever have.” She lowered her voice to a deadly whisper, ignoring her uncle as he took a step forward, either to pull her away or to hear her better. “The Blue Lions are my family, every one of them. But I wouldn’t expect you to know what that means.”

It was strange, seeing her father’s eyes widen in hurt. Like looking in a mirror in a moment she’d never been able to capture.

“If that’s how you feel, Annette,” he said, “Then act like it. Why would you marry a man that’s thrown his life and his loyalties away? Why would you betray everyone so dear to you, just to buy yourself an empty freedom?”

Annette felt the anger fade away from her, leaving only sadness. It was a familiar phenomenon with her father, even if the circumstances were bizarre. She glanced over at her uncle, who had returned to leaning against the opposite wall, but could still hear every word. What could she say that he wouldn’t understand? Her uncle knew her better than her father did, if she was being honest. She had no secret language with Gustave, no inside jokes, no code to tell him that he could trust her.

Perhaps foolishly, she tried to tell him the truth instead.

“Father, I’m doing this because it’s the best way forward,” she said. She realized he was looking over her head now, refusing to look down enough to make eye contact. She wondered if he was looking at his brother, instead. “I need you to believe that this is the way I can help us; this is the way I can fix things,” she implored. “I need you to be there for me, on my wedding day. I need you to trust me.” _I need you to look at me_ she added mentally, but that had always been the unsung refrain when she talked to Gustave, and it had never worked before.

“I always knew that boy was no good, the way he followed you around,” Gustave muttered darkly to himself, as if he hadn’t heard her at all. “But you, Annette. I never thought you –” he looked at her finally and her breath caught in her throat at the grief in his eyes. “Your mother and I never wanted this for you – our family is not wealthy but we never wanted you to have to give yourself away to some –”

“Leave mother _out_ of this,” Annette cried, her voice cracking when she tried to sound powerful and wavering when she tried to sound angry. “How would you know what she wants? How would you know what _I_ want?”

She had flung herself at the door without realizing it, pounding her fist against it to emphasize her words. “How could you know _anything_ about us at _all_ , father? Or was this what you wanted, you and mother – did you want to be here, trapped away from your wife and away from your family and not listening to a _single_ thing I _say_ –”

Gérald was pulling her away from the door as her words collapsed into incoherent, angry sobs. She didn’t see her father’s final expression as her uncle led her away from the door and towards the stairs – she didn’t want to, and for once she didn’t feel guilty about that.

Annette tried to regain composure as they walked past the guard that stood by the doorway. Her uncle stopped as they reached the bottom of the stairs, putting a hand on each shoulder to steady her like he had when she’d visited as a child and he wanted to see how much she’d grown.

“I’ll talk to him, Annette,” he said softly, his voice still grave but his eyes full of sympathy. “You don’t need to stay and listen; I’ll talk some sense into him.” Annette blinked at her uncle in wordless shock. Perhaps worried she was going to cry again, he gave her a couple of strong pats on her arm. “He’ll come around,” he said gruffly, no longer looking at her. “You should go to bed.”

Annette stopped on the third step from the bottom, turning suddenly. “Uncle?” she asked him before he could slip through the door into the dungeon once more.

He turned back. “Yes, Annette?” he asked, his voice a touch wary.

“My mother and father . . . did they want to get married?” Annette asked. She couldn’t shake the look of sheer desperation on her father’s face when he finally brought up her mother – it was the first time she’d heard him speak of her on his own volition in years. “Did they – were they in love?”

Her uncle sighed, closing the door behind him and leaning against it. “Your mother and father . . . I’ve never seen a couple more in love than they were on their wedding day.” He looked up at her; it was strange to look down at a man who had always towered over her, but the stairs gave her the advantage. “And when you were born, I was sure I’d never seen a family that was happier.”

Annette found herself unable to reply. Showing mercy over practicality for once in his life, her uncle left her without requiring a response. The guard steadfastly looked ahead, but once the door was closed behind Gérald, he gave Annette a look of pity that made her wish they’d never met.

Annette had only intended to make it up the stairs and out of the dungeon before finding a wall to collapse against, but the last five years had made her stronger than she gave herself credit for – she made it all the way to her bedroom before she finally, blessedly found the pillow she’d been waiting all day to scream into.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am forever caught between a battle of knowing in my heart that Felix would swear like a sailor and thinking it’s intrinsically hilarious when they yell things like “Blast!” and “You craven cur!!” in the old GBA games. So that’s why Annette’s uncle and father talk like they’re in an old timey Robin Hood adaptation. Drat! You knave! Gentle reader, you must let me have my little moments of joy.
> 
> I’m pretty sure I meant for this chapter to be less angsty when I started it. Like I definitely had an ending in my mind that was actually kind of funny, instead of . . . whatever we’ve got going on here. But hey, if we let Annette be happy for longer than 5 minutes everyone would probably get bored and go home! I promise 1 billion percent more Felix and 1 zillion percent less Gilbert in the next chapter. I fully admit that this one was just Annette talking to the disappointing men in her life about the other disappointing men in her life, like some sort of terrible Bizarro World Bechdel Test. 
> 
> Thanks to [ NightMereBear ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NightMereBear/pseuds/NightMereBear) for beta reading this chapter for me! If you read a sentence and you’re like “oh wow that was remarkably coherent!” it’s probably because of her, so that’s pretty rad.
> 
> Hugs and kisses; enjoy your weekend! Enjoy the Superbowl if you’re a jock or whatever, and may you have plenty of new AO3 updates to read on your phone at a party if you’re not.


	6. Felix Encourages Rumors

Felix waited to leave his room until he was fairly sure that most of the castle had retired to bed. He had confirmed travel plans with the head of his battalion, written a quick note to Matthew to report his arrival and alert him that his stay might be extended, and unpacked his limited belongings. Have nothing much else to do, he pretended to read a book while actually staring at the flickering candle on his bedside table and trying not to think about the cut of cold steel against his throat or Annette’s shaking hands shivering against his chest. It was a strange way to spend the first evening of an engagement. It would be more traditional, he realized, for him to spend the evening with Annette in one of the parlors or libraries, having pleasant conversations or playing bridge or whatever nonsense you did when you were courting a beautiful young woman. But Gérald Dominic had dropped multiple hints that he wanted to speak to Annette alone and that he was sure Felix was tired from his journey. Which was fine – Felix had frankly had enough of the man after spending an hour locked in his library brusquely arranging details regarding his probable engagement to Annette.

A month. He was supposed to spend a month sitting on his hands and practicing sword technique against shadows and waiting to marry a girl who didn't actually love him, all on the off chance that they would have a window of opportunity to smuggle her father out of the castle. This was what he got for trying to come up with ideas instead of swinging a sword in whatever direction he was told. He didn’t often admit it, but he desperately wished he could speak to Byleth. When she had gone over the plan, one final time before he left Garreg Mach, it had seemed so simple. Far too much diplomacy and not nearly enough firepower, but a straightforward mission with a single objective, all the same. He’d packed for a week and planned for three days. Now, while his allies made an actual difference on the battlefield, he was staring down an entire moon of pretense at polite family dinners and parlor games with a hostage and her jailor.

Granted, no small part of him wondered if it was now considered old-fashioned for young women to play piano and sing in order to entertain company. He had suffered through many visiting young ladies performing terrible renditions of classic folk songs as a child, as he sat next to an extremely bored Glenn and wondered if it was worse to sit still and listen for another three songs or to be sent to bed for the rest of the night. He hadn’t been particularly appreciative as a young child, and music had slowly faded from the Fraldarius parlors following his mother’s death, but Felix found himself suddenly very interested if such hobbies were still popular among courting nobles.

There were worse things in life than pretending to be in love with Annette Dominic.

This was mostly what he thought about as he wandered the halls of the Dominic castle that evening, searching for Annette’s room, a small satchel slung over his shoulder. He’d sent one of his most trusted soldiers to try to figure out its location earlier that evening, but the directions he’d been given were jumbled and he was unfamiliar with the castle. It felt strange to wander in an unfamiliar place without a sword – and following the events of that afternoon, he’d pared it down to only one hidden dagger, which now seemed criminally negligent on his part. To his surprise, there were still plenty of servants wandering around the castle at this time of night – although thankfully he did not run into Gérald at any point – and they gave him directions with knowing smirks as he tried to navigate the castle. He eventually made his way to the east wing, third floor, fourth door on the right, where he had been promised he would find Annette.

Felix hesitated before knocking on the door. A light shone from under the door, so he knew someone was inside and awake. But part of him worried about how he’d explain himself if it wasn’t actually Annette’s room.

Felix looked around the hallway, and realized that he was not alone. A woman stood at the end of the hallway, a few doors down, polishing the frame of a painting of a solemn, regal couple – no doubt Annette’s ancestors, though without any of her warmth or joy.

“Excuse me,” Felix said, walking over to the woman, who looked as if she had worked at the castle long enough to know her way around it. “Do you know which is Miss Dominic’s room? I have something I wanted to give her.” He gestured to the satchel as proof of his claim.

The servant looked at Felix suspiciously. He tried to look pleasant, but suspected that he failed at it. She jerked her head back towards where he was standing. “You were at the right place. She’s probably gone to bed by now, though,” she said, although she didn’t sound particularly convinced by the last claim.

Felix thanked her for her time and walked back to the door. Raising his hand again to knock, he stopped, feeling a set of eyes on him. He turned and the woman swung back to her polishing, not nearly fast enough so that Felix didn’t see her blatant staring. He narrowed his eyes – something felt off about the whole situation. He slowly walked back over to the paintings. Annette’s great aunt and uncle or whoever glared down at him.

“Kind of late to have to still be working,” he remarked, leaning against the wall across from the painting.

The woman gave a disdainful snort of laughter. “Baron Dominic asks that I keep strange hours,” she said dryly.

“Let me guess,” Felix said. “You work until the light goes out under that door.” He pointed towards Annette’s bedroom.

The woman didn’t reply.

“And you’ve spent more time on this frame than any others in the house this month.”

She still didn’t reply, but gave him a shrewd, appraising glance. Felix took heart that she didn’t outright grimace in her evaluation.

“Listen,” he said, pulling a small bag of money from his belt and shaking a few gold coins loose. “What if I asked you to go clean some paintings on the second floor for a bit?” He held out his hand, the coins resting on his palm.

The woman looked at him suspiciously. “I’m loyal to the Dominic household, your grace.”

“I’m not saying you shouldn’t be,” Felix said. “I’m just saying you should go pay respects to one of their other ancestors for a while.”

She looked down at the gold, then back up at him. “How long is ‘a while’?” she asked. Her voice was still suspicious but Felix could see a glint in her eye that told him she wasn’t outright against the deal.

“Say an hour,” Felix said. “No one will ever know you were gone; no one will ever know I’m here.”

The woman took the coins and they vanished in a blink. She gave him a final look that was suspiciously like a sneer before walking down the hallway and disappearing down a corridor. Felix wondered if he’d just started a worse rumor than if he’d just left her alone, but at least he knew she wouldn’t be listening at keyholes.

He knocked on Annette’s door.

It took her long enough to open the door that Felix began to wonder if maybe he was in the wrong place, after all. But eventually, the door cracked open, and Annette peeked through at him. With a confused “ _Felix_?” as she saw him, she opened the door wider, and Felix stepped through into her room.

It was messier than he would have expected. Back at Garreg Mach, Annette traipsed through Felix’s room as if she owned it, but he had never actually seen the inside of hers. He’d always assumed it would be neat, given her love of organization and careful, meticulous study habits. But her room here was overrun with piles and piles of books scattered on every available surface, including a large desk in the back corner that was overflowing with papers and notes. Even her bed was dotted with books, which was jarring given that it otherwise looked like it should be covered in stuffed animals. A frilly pink canopy hung over the bed, paired with a matching bedspread embroidered with flowers and birds. Felix remembered suddenly that this was Annette’s bedroom from when she was a teenager, and wondered if she ever wished she could update the décor – or if she ever had a say in it in the first place. It was possible this bedroom had been designed for a child and never updated, but it was also entirely possible that this was a perfect representation of Annette at thirteen.

It was not, however, a very good representation of Annette at twenty-two. The Annette that stood in front of him looked as if she didn’t even realize pink was a color that existed, let alone one she could choose for a bedspread. She looked downright glum. She’d pulled her hair back into a manageable braid and had a fairly thick dressing gown thrown over her night dress – spring nights were still remarkably cold this far north and a breeze was blowing in from the open window. It didn’t look like he’d woken her up, but Felix suddenly wished he’d just waited until the next day to talk to her. Her face was drawn and pale and her eyes were rimmed with red. He’d probably caused enough trouble for one day.

“Everything okay?” he asked, leaning against the door as it closed behind him. “You look terrible.” He could feel Ingrid glaring at him from hundreds of miles away as he said it.

Annette gave him a look that rivaled Ingrid’s in terms of sheer annoyance, and walked back towards the window to close it. Felix wondered how much their voices carried. She looked over her shoulder as she closed the window and said, “When you get a fiancée for real, Felix, maybe don’t talk to her. Just let her watch you during sword tournaments and she can imagine you’re actually nice.”

“I’m nice!” Felix protested. “I’m just checking that things are alright!”

To his surprise, Annette started laughing at this. Bitter, wild laughter that she couldn’t quite stop. Still laughing, she made her way to the front of the room, where a small couch sat in front of a fireplace with a now-dying fire still lit. She collapsed on the loveseat and covered her face with her hands. Felix wandered over to the couch but didn’t sit down, still wondering if maybe the best course of action would just be to leave her alone.

“No, Felix, _things_ are not _all right_ ,” she said, peeking up at him through her fingers and then covering her face again as she gave a final, dramatic sigh. “I woke up this morning thinking you were absolute villain and now we’re supposed to be getting married in a month and I miss my mother and I can’t talk to Mercie about anything.” She paused to take a giant breath, and Felix knew better to interrupt. “And _also_ ,” she continued, “You’re standing in my bedroom and I haven’t cleaned it in days and I look awful and my uncle thinks you’re in love with me and my father thinks you’re a traitor to the crown.”

Felix took a moment to process all of these things, and then responded to the ones he more or less could contribute to.

“Those last two seem fine to me; that’s kind of the whole point of this entire plan, right?” he asked. He moved to sit down next to her and Annette scooted her feet out of the way to give him room, hugging her knees to her chest. “I wouldn’t propose to you if I didn’t like you, right?”

“No, but my uncle thinks you’re, like, _super_ in love,” Annette said. “Like he thinks you’re recklessly throwing away your life and prospects for this match. And he might think I love you back; it was a confusing conversation,” she added, wrinkling her nose slightly.

“I mean,” Felix said. He paused. What did he mean? “I’d rather he think I’m an idiot than think I’m planning something,” he finally said. “Sorry he thinks you have such bad taste, though.”

Annette pouted. “That’s not what I meant. Stop teasing me, I’ve had a long day.”

“And I can live with your father not liking me for a couple of weeks,” Felix continued. “He’ll come back around when we get him out of jail and he can go back to lamenting his past mistakes or whatever it is he does for the church.”

“Be nice,” said Annette. “And it _is_ a big deal, if he refuses to participate in the wedding out of protest. Us being married doesn’t really help him if he stays in the dungeon the entire time.”

“Wait, he would do that?” Felix asked.

“I saw him tonight,” Annette explained. “He’s . . . really upset.”

“Four saints, that man,” Felix muttered. “You’d think he’d at least have a sense of self-preservation, or he’d want to see the sky for once instead of saying prayers to Sothis in the dark all day.”

“I said be _nice_ ,” Annette snapped. “It’s bad enough that he’s all alone down there without your scorn on top of it, Felix.”

Felix relented. He had little love for Gilbert but Annette’s eyes were desperate and panicked. “Do you want me to try to talk to him?” Felix asked. “Maybe I could drop a hint that the boar and I are still best friends or whatever.”

“Could you get through a conversation without insulting either of them?”

“I make no promises,” Felix muttered.

Annette sighed. “I’ll keep working on him. He’s my father, he has to listen to me at some point.” Silence hung in the air for a moment; neither one of them wanted to point out how ridiculous that claim was, given the past six years. Annette quickly changed the subject. “You, meanwhile, should start figuring out a way to break open the locks and get past the guards. If we can break him out we don’t even need to go through this whole wedding thing.”

“It sounds easy when you say it,” Felix said. “Just break into this high-security prison, Felix, what’s the worst that could happen?”

“You have time!” Annette protested. “My uncle says the wedding wouldn't be for another month.”

“Don’t I know it,” Felix said with a sigh, leaning back into the couch cushions. “Do weddings always take this long to plan? Do you guys have a training ground around here I can use? I’m losing my edge; I can tell already.”

“How can you think about training at a time like this?” Annette said.

“I’m always thinking about training,” Felix said, not offended by the judgment in her voice.

“Did you just come here to ask me where the training grounds were?” Annette asked grumpily. “I wouldn’t put it past you.”

“I wouldn’t put it past me, either, but no,” Felix said. “I actually have a reason. He reached down and snagged the bag he was carrying off the floor. It was too heavy to throw to Annette, so he leaned over the couch and handed it to her. “Here, I brought you something,” he explained as she took the bag from him and opened it up.

Annette opened the bag and looked inside. Her eyes grew wide and she exclaimed, “Felix! These are – you brought –”

“Yeah, I kind of figured you’d have read your way through your entire library by now, so you might want some new material,” Felix said.

Annette pulled out the stack of three books from the bag, tossing it aside carelessly as she ran her fingers down the spine of each book. “They’re . . . they’re spell books. It’s magic theory,” she said. Felix thought it was a bit of an obvious statement to have so much emotion attached to it, but Annette always had been a little strange around books. “Are they all Reason?” she asked, looking up as if she’d suddenly remembered he was sitting across from her.

“Um, Reason and Faith both, I think. I didn’t know what to get, so I asked around – that one’s from Mercedes,” Felix explained, referencing the top book in the stack, which Annette had leaped on and was now eagerly pawing through. “She says it will help you with Bishop certification, which – I didn’t think you were doing that one?”

“I’m not, I’m pretty shabby at healing in the grand scheme of things,” Annette said, her nose already stuck in a book full of terms that Felix couldn’t even pronounce, let alone understand. “But it’s better to be safe than sorry!” She tore her eyes away from that book and landed on the next. “Wait a minute, is this from Ashe?” she asked excitedly.

“Yeah; I don’t think he can even do anything in it, but he was pretty adamant you’d want that one.”

“It’s part of a series, I’ve been working my way through it for _months_ now,” Annette said. If she opened Mercedes’s book with a kind of joyful, reckless, abandon, she flipped through this one with driven intentionality, stopping and murmuring to herself when she found a chapter title she liked.

“Why would Ashe know that?” Felix prompted, trying to catch Annette’s attention before she lost herself entirely in the book.

“He was helping me get through it. We made flash cards,” Annette said absently, clearly barely listening to Felix’s question. Felix stopped himself from smiling; if she saw she’d inevitably accuse him of laughing at her. But Annette curled up in a chair far too big for her, totally ignoring the world around her in favor of a book, was the most Annette thing he’d seen all day. She flipped back briefly to the table of contents, and was momentarily startled out of her reverie.

“Wait a minute – this is a book plate from the library. You didn’t take these from the _library_ , did you?”

Felix shrugged. “No one else was using it.”

“Felix!” Annette said, her voice indignant. “We’re not allowed to take these off monastery grounds! You need permission to even take them out of the library!

“I feel like this shouldn’t be your priority right now,” muttered Felix. “Just, in the grand scheme of things.”

“I’ve got to hide these,” Annette said, standing up and looking around the room with an intentionality Felix didn’t quite understand. It seemed to him that if she just put them on any of the dozens of stacks of books around her they would disappear into the background, but Annette was clearly on a mission that Felix could not contribute to.

“It’s going to be pretty hard to read them if you hide them,” Felix pointed out, not moving from his spot on the loveseat.

“No one can see me reading these; you can’t let my uncle know I have them,” Annette said, lifting a couch cushion and sticking the books underneath. The couch cushion jutted out at an add angle; they were ridiculously thick books.

“Your uncle won’t let you read?” Felix asked, horrified more on her behalf than out of any intrinsic love of language.

“Just magic books,” Annette explained, futilely trying to hide the books in a hanging plant in her window. “There was an incident.”

Felix wondered if he was every going to get an itemized list of all the incidents Annette had caused in the last four weeks. But that was beside the point right now.

“If he asks, just tell him I brought them for you as an engagement present,” Felix suggested helpfully. “It might make him like me more; I think he’s kind of ticked I didn’t get you a ring.”

“You think telling him you brought me _stolen library books_ will make you look better?” Annette asked. She’d given up on finding a hiding place and walked back over to where Felix was sitting, grasping the books to her chest as if he might steal them from her instead.

Felix blushed. “I think it’s a pretty good gift. You seemed excited to get them.”

“You didn’t even buy them!”

“That’s even cooler. It gives me a kind of bad boy persona; Sylvain always tells me that girls love that.”

Annette threw a pillow at him, which he batted away easily. She sat back down on the couch where the pillow had been, clutching the books as if they were worth millions.

“The last one isn’t from the library. Felix said, nudging it towards her. “It’s a joint present from Ashe and Mercedes; I think they got it from Anna or something.”

Annette picked it up and looked at it curiously. Her eyes widened as she read the title. “Goddess, Mercie, how did you even _get_ this,” she murmured to herself, opening the cover as if it was holy.

“Is it . . . do you like it?” Felix asked. He was unable to read Annette’s expression, a strange mixture of awe and something like fear.

Annette looked up at him, once again seeming surprised he was still there. “I – no – I love it, it’s just –” She looked back down at the book. “This is Sir Fitzhugh Donneghey’s last treatise on magic –”

“I’m sorry,” Felix interrupted. “Sir Whosit Whatsit?”

“Don’t make fun of his name, Felix, he’s really famous! And _really_ controversial,” Annette said. She’d run out pillows to throw so she settled for giving him a glare that didn’t really hide either her amusement or her growing excitement. “This whole book is basically about how Faith magic and Reason magic are inherently connected; that to study one is to understand the other. Seteth probably wouldn’t even allow a copy on campus, let alone have it in the library. I don’t understand how they got ahold of it.”

Felix wasn’t sure, but Ashe and Mercedes secretive and nervous giggles as they pushed the book into his hands were starting to make more sense. “Like I said, I think Anna helped. Her trade network is kind of terrifying. And Ashe always could haggle a price down.”

He realized tears were forming in the corners of Annette’s eyes, and she looked down and blinked, clearly hoping he wouldn’t notice. He pretended to be very interested in the fireplace. Finally, she whispered, “I’ve missed those two.” Felix looked back at her and she was running her hand down the spine of the book as if it had some sort of tactile meaning. “And I’ve missed this,” she added. She finally looked up at him. “And I’ve missed you, Felix. Thank you for bringing these for me. I’m sure you had other things to think about.”

“I didn’t do much,” Felix said gruffly, suddenly embarrassed by how she beamed at him. “They found the books; I just had the luggage space.”

Annette laughed and looked back down at the books, eagerly flipping through Ashe’s recommendation again as if she were trying to find the place she’d left off reading. Felix smiled slightly; there was no danger of her looking up and catching him, at this point.

“I’d better let you get to bed – I know when I’m a third wheel,” he said. Annette for once didn’t scold him for teasing, but only because she was already three paragraphs into whatever chapter she’d been searching for.

“Mm, goodnight, Felix,” she said, already flicking to the next page. “You might want to go back to your room by way of the second floor – we don’t want anyone to see you wandering around at this time of night.”

“Oh, that ship has sailed,” Felix said. “There was someone directly outside your room earlier.”

Annette looked up sharply from her book. “Somebody _saw_ you come in here?”

“Sort of?” Felix ventured. “I bribed her to go away, though, so it’s not like she’s going to overhear us. Unless – shoot, maybe she came back after 15 minutes; I should have checked.” He craned his neck towards the door as if he could tell if a figure was standing outside, but Annette had no interest in that line of thinking.

“She wouldn’t be able to hear anything, but if she _saw_ you come in here, she knows we’re talking!” she said, putting her books aside and leaning forward. “People are going to know we’re here together!”

Felix blinked. “Does it matter if people know we talk to each other?”

“Felix, yes!” Annette said, exasperated. “That looks so suspicious – they’re going to know we’re up to something; there will be rumors of conspiracy. We can’t let people grow suspicious of us; we have to keep this up for a _month_ and it’s the first _night_.”

“Annette, I don’t think you need to worry about that,” Felix said flatly. “We have a pretty good cover story, all things considered.”

Annette gaped at him. “What reason could you possibly have for being here that’s not incredibly suspicious, Felix? It’s almost midnight,” she said.

“What reason would I have to visit my fiancée in her room at eleven o’clock at night?” Felix repeated back to her. “Annette, you’ve been top of the class for six years running; I feel like you can figure this one out.”

“Oh,” said Annette, suddenly following. Then after a pause, she added, “Ew.”

“Thanks a bunch,” said Felix sarcastically, throwing his feet up on the table in front of the fireplace and leaning against the arm of the couch.

“I’m just saying it’s really embarrassing! For everyone to be talking about us,” Annette said, stubbornly burying herself against the opposite end of the couch, far away from Felix.

“Hey, if it helps,” Felix said, “I’m sure I hypothetically would never pressure you into doing anything you hypothetically didn’t want to do.”

“Hand me that pillow,” Annette said. “So I can throw it at you again.”

“Absolutely not,” said Felix. “I’m not arming you with more projectiles.”

“You just gave me three books.”

“You wouldn’t throw those.”

Annette called his bluff. Felix caught the book this time; batting it away might hurt the spine and he _did_ want to return them to the library eventually.

“You have two more of those, so I guess that’s my cue to leave,” he said, gently setting the book on the coffee table and swinging his legs off it. Before he could stand, however, Annette grabbed his arm and leaned in towards him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked as he looked down at her. She was frowning as she looked back at him.

“You don’t . . . _look_ like you’ve snuck out of your fiancée’s bedroom after midnight,” Annette said finally, staring at him a little too intensely, like he was a Reason formula she’d just realized was mislabeled.

“What do you mean? I always look like this, this is just what I look like,” Felix said defensively. “I'm not going to spend a month grinning at you like an idiot; I’m not Sylvain.”

“No, I mean, you just look so –” Annette waved her hands in a way that didn’t help explain her position at all. “So buttoned up,” she finally concluded, blushing as she said it.

Felix leaned away from her but quickly bumped into the arm of the couch behind him. “I look fine,” he said sullenly. “Weren’t you embarrassed about people gossiping like 30 seconds ago?”

“I’m embarrassed _now_ , Felix, but you’re right, it’s better if they think we’re, um, courting,” Annette said. “Can you at least mess up your hair or something? Work with me, here.”

Felix rolled his eyes, but ran his hands through his hair a couple of times, hoping it would satisfy Annette. It did not.

“No, it somehow looks even neater now? What are you – here, let me do it,” she said with an exasperated sigh. She clamored across the couch cushions, closing the already-scant gap between them and pushing Felix back up against the armrest.

“Annette, are you really sure this is necessa – ow!” Felix gave a yelp as Annette yanked a fistful of his hair out of his carefully tied-back ponytail.

Annette dropped her hands in horror, still balanced half on top of him. “Sorry! Sorry. Your hair is way thinner than mine, I wasn’t expecting it,” she said.

“I mean, it’s fine,” said Felix as Annette resumed running her fingers through his hair in the wrong direction, pulling at the ends of it so it fell around his shoulders in a distressing tangle. “I’m just not sure . . .” Felix didn’t finish the sentence as Annette ran a thumb across the nape of his neck. She was slightly biting her bottom lip in concentration, and Felix tried to focus on that, or on anything other than that, before he realized he’d completely zoned out mid-conversation. On one hand, he was pretty certain this wasn’t a particularly useful precaution. On the other hand, Annette’s fingers were soft and nimble and it was very difficult not to lean into her hand as she tugged on the other side of his ponytail, trying to make the mess more symmetrical. He forced himself to find words and tried speaking again. “Do you really think this is necessary, is all I’m saying,” he said, cursing how his voice rasped as he spoke.

Annette dropped her hands and stared down at him, her mouth set in a straight line.

“Yes,” she said flatly, and moved on to fiddling with the buttons of his shirt.

“So when you said buttoned up, you meant literally?” Felix asked.

“Stop teasing,” Annette said sternly. “Is three too much?” she added, her voice growing uncertain as she played with the third button, trying to decide. Felix shifted awkwardly beneath her, inadvertently throwing her off balance so she grabbed his collar for support as she tilted towards the edge of the couch. He grabbed her waist to steady her, partially out of instinct and partially out of his own sense of self-preservation, for fear that the next time she fell she would take Felix with her.

“You okay?” he asked her, realizing she was a bit shaky as she leaned against him, despite her authoritative tone.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “You okay?”

“I mean, my hair looks terrible, but other than that,” Felix said. It was a weak joke, but Annette gave a small giggle in reply.

“One last thing, if that’s okay?” she asked after a pause. Felix nodded, and was surprised when she leaned down and kissed him, purposefully – on his cheek, on his forehead, on his temple. Her lips grazing against him made Felix feel safe, and wanted, and also deeply, deeply confused.

“Not sure what you’re going for here, Annie,” he said, bewildered despite himself. “No one is around to see us right now, you know.” A part of him was kicking himself for talking at all when Annette was literally, actually kissing him. He _would_ find a way to mess up a moment he’d played in his head as often as her ridiculously catchy songs. But he kicked that of him part back, for being selfish and stupid enough to read more into her touch than he would ever be entitled to.

“I was thinking lipstick marks? I don’t know, you never know what people will notice,” Annette said, pulling away slightly to look at him. She bit back another giggle. “But either way, if your face stays as red as it is right now, people will _definitely_ think something happened.”

“Now who’s teasing,” Felix mumbled, blushing even harder and looking away. Annette laughed outright at this and pressed a kiss against his chin. Felix felt himself smiling, more at her laughter than anything else. It was so tempting to sink back into the couch and pull Annette in towards him and try to forget for a moment that this was all ultimately only an elaborate performance. It was foolish, but it was tempting. But as Annette gave him one last look to survey her handiwork and then leaned down to add one final kiss against his ear, Felix allowed himself to relax just for the moment, with the solemn promise that he would refocus on their mission the next day. And for that moment, he was able to find a straightforward, unsustainable, greedy joy in the simplicity of having Annette in his arms, soft and sweet and content and treating him with something that almost felt like tenderness.

So it was rather a surprise when she shifted down and bit his neck.

Felix jolted in surprise, and Annette quickly returned to her now-cliché upright position of clasping her hands against her mouth in horror.

  
“Sorry!” she said quickly. “I just thought – I’ve heard sometimes people do that. Was it too hard?”

“You’re not allowed to hang out with Sylvain anymore,” Felix said darkly. “He’s a _terrible_ influence on you.” He looked at her, and was amused to see she was blushing just as hard as he was.

“It was Mercie, actually, but Sylvain might be to blame,” Annette said a little too brightly. “They both disappeared at that winter ball and I always kind of thought –”

“I don’t think I want to know the end of that story,” Felix interrupted.

Annette pouted. “Well, you shouldn’t have brought it up, then!” she said.

There was a pause as Felix tried to remember if he had actually brought anything of the kind up. He decided it wasn’t worth arguing about.

“So are you planning on biting me any more, or what?” Felix asked, his voice sharp to hide his embarrassment. He possibly meant it as an invitation, but Annette didn’t take it that way. She scrambled off him and the loveseat, clasping a hand against her cheek to hide how red she was turning.

“It sounds bad when you say it like _that_ ,” she said, her voice squeaking slightly as she held out a hand to help him up.

“How else am I supposed to say it? ‘Are you done seducing me?’ Is that better?” Felix did not need a hand up, but he took her offered hand anyways – and was immediately met with an elbow to the ribcage.

“Fe-lix! I’m just trying to help,” Annette said, and he could hear the ghost of the word _evil_ in the way she whined his name. “My uncle thinks we’re in _love_ , you have to play along.”

“Yeah, well, playing along hurts more than I thought it would,” Felix said, brushing his fingers against his neck gingerly and wincing. “Are you sure it’s supposed to – um – it just seems a little extreme, is all.”

“Well, I don’t _know_ , Felix,” Annette grumbled at him. She was more or less shoving him towards the door at this point, clearly too embarrassed to move on to another topic of conversation. Their evening chat was over. “This is new territory for me, too – ”

“I never said it was _new territory_ – ”

“ – if I’m so bad at this then maybe you do the seducing next time.”

Felix stopped walking at this, Annette’s little shoves glancing off him futilely. “That’s a good point,” he said, ignoring the way her blush deepened to an even more absurd shade of pink. “What if people see _you_ , Annette?”

“Me?” Annette exclaimed, crossing her arms protectively and glaring up at him. “I look fine!”

“That’s the problem! Your braid doesn’t have a strand out of place. What _would_ people think?”

“Well, no one’s going to see _me_ ,” Annette argued, which was a good point. “I'm staying in my room; I’m going be bed.”

“Yeah, but the door will be wide open when I leave. Anyone could see inside. Who knows who’s lurking out in the hallway,” Felix said, raising his eyebrow as seriously as he could.

“You’re being patently ridiculous,” Annette said.

“I don’t think I am,” Felix said. Her hands were tucked in against her crossed arms, so instead he looped his hand around her shoulder and pulled her slightly closer. “I think I’m playing along, right?”

Felix braced for another elbow to the ribs as Annette uncrossed her arms. Instead, she tentatively reached out and grabbed the front of his shirt, balancing against him as she shifted to look up at him from such a close angle. He was kissing her before either of them had time to fully read one another’s expressions.

In truth, when Felix kissed Annette, he was too hesitant and too gentle for there to be much by way of after-the-fact evidence. His hand barely closed around her shoulder, as if he expected her to pull away at any moment. If anything, the only difference would be more bruises for Felix – as her other hand clutched his arm for balance, Annette dug her fingers into his bicep with surprising strength. That she tasted like chamomile and smelled like marigolds meant very little to their overall plan to fake a courtship, but in the moment it was just about all Felix could think about.

The kiss didn’t last long, both because Felix didn’t exactly know what he was doing and because he had a sudden, jarring realization of exactly what he was doing. When Felix broke away, Annette fell into him awkwardly. She pushed herself away and stared at him, her eyes wide.

“Felix, that . . .” she whispered. She didn’t finish the sentence.

“Right,” said Felix stiffly. “I should go.” He backpedaled to the door. Annette was still staring at him, stunned, her fingers absently brushing against her lips.

He turned back before he could open the door, the slim part of his brain that was still working realizing he probably hadn’t said enough.

“Sorry.” Felix added. “Goodnight. Sorry.”

  
He was out the door before Annette had a chance to reply.

The same servant had returned to polishing the same painting frame, a task that looked even more absurd this late into the night. She didn’t turn around as Felix pulled the door behind him, but he wasn’t stupid enough to think she didn’t know he was there.

“Next time let’s make it two hours,” he muttered to her as he walked past.

“Next time let’s double the price, then,” she shot back cheerfully. Her eyes gleamed with a wicked mirth as she looked at him walk by. He didn’t reply; they understood each other well enough.

Felix gave a final glance back to Annette’s room as he started to round the corner at the end of the hall. The door was already firmly closed; no one else would see her that night. She had been right – strictly speaking, there had been no practical reason for him to kiss her.

But then, strictly speaking, there had been no practical reason for her to kiss him back.

  
And she still had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


	7. Annette Has Faith

_Dearest Darling Mercie,_

_I suppose by the time you read this you will have heard of my betrothal to Felix Fraldarius. My uncle will not let me send you an announcement but I plan to continue writing these letters and saving them in hopes that we can someday read them together over tea. The last few days have been such a whirlwind that I cannot imagine I will be able to keep things straight without a record to assist me._

_I must admit, there are conversations that are best to be had in person, and I do worry about what I put to paper, for fear that the wrong eyes will see it. (I have several things to tell you about Felix, for example, that I would not want him to see in writing. Among other topics.) But I will do my best to keep you updated on my life, just as I have, even with these sudden unexpected developments._

_I need not say how deeply I wish you were here in person. I have much need of your advice, not only because I am expected to have opinions on flowers and dresses and music and I will not have your counsel. (And I do have opinions, I just have too many of them. Picture me trying to choose between items at a bakery and you can imagine my current state.) But I also wish I had your ear for more personal matters. Remind me to ask you about the White Heron Ball; I am looking for clarification on a matter that you might be able to provide. On other matters, I must remain opaque, if only because my own feelings are too confusing and contradictory to put to paper. But I remain certain that I love you more than the whole world, and I suppose that will have to be enough! _

_Yours always,_

_Annie_

_Mercie, Light of My Eyes,_

_I’ve really been enjoying Sir Fitzhugh Donneghey’s The Application of Faith Magic in a World of Reason, which Felix brought for me as an engagement present. Whoever told him it was a good choice was a very smart, very beautiful, very excellent cleric indeed. I presume. I am particularly eager to discuss his approach to Abraxus within the context of higher-level wind spells, which mirrors our own observations on how our magical styles complement and contradict one another, don’t you think? I think this could have such interesting implications for teaching wind magic to beginners, particularly those who come from a healing background. The whole book has made me think more seriously about how we teach introductory techniques; do you think I would have any potential as a teacher? (Ignore the future-Duchess thing in this scenario, please.)_

_I am more confused by the book he gave me that's more purely on faith magic techniques. I wonder WHAT he was thinking to give it to me. I know I always had a knack for reason over faith, but some of these meditation exercises seem like utter gibberish to me! Promise me it gets better in the second half; I KNOW you’ve read it before._

_Wedding plans continue apace. I keep getting swept from person to person and I can barely keep straight who I’m talking to and why. I wish you were here to beat them away with a stick. Or a cooking spatula! Or something. If Felix dies and I’m an old widow, let’s get married instead. You’d be much better at this than him; he can’t make decisions on anything. He keeps trying to sneak off to the training grounds instead, even though I’ve told him he’s only going to hurt his arm more if he keeps trying to practice on it._

_I have to end the letter here – Felix has come to bother me. He’s annoyed that he can’t navigate the hedge maze as well as me, so we’ve taken to trying to map it during our post-dinner walks these past few days. He’s really mad that I'm so much better at it than he is, it’s actually kind of –_

_Sorry for the ink splotch in the paragraph above – Felix grabbed the pen out of my hand. So impatient! I’m making him wait now just to be annoying, but I guess I probably should go._

_Always yours (especially if Felix dies),_

_Annie_

_Esteemed Associate (Mercie),_

_I think I understand why I’m supposed to read that faith book. You really are the cleverest friend I’ve ever had, did you know that? And you make the best blueberry crumble._

_Longer letter later; I’m expected at a dress fitting in 20 minutes. I’ll be wearing my mother’s wedding dress to save time for the seamstresses, as the date of the ceremony is rapidly approaching – two and a half weeks away, now! I’m rather surprised we still have the dress, but what is a noble family if not an assortment of meaningless memories preserved by tradition alone? I would rather see my mother than her dress, but my uncle promises she will be joining us soon._

_Mercie, before I go – do you ever feel that I read into things too much? I’m worried I’m reading into things too much right now, and that I'm going to mess up some very important relationships in my life because I want them to be more than they are. Or different than they are? Or the same as they are, but I’m different than I am? I’m not describing the problem very well. It’s very hard to separate truth from make-believe right now; the best way I can think to describe it is that this entire wedding feels like a dream that I’m not waking up from, and I’m not sure which parts are the dream and which parts are actually me. I miss you._

_I said I would go. Pat Ashe on the head for me; you’re tall enough and he’ll hate it._

_Yours, always and forever,_

_Annie_

“Stand up straight,” the head seamstress told Annette, swatting her gently against the piles of fabric she was buried under.

Annnette drew herself up to full height, which was made higher by the stepstool she was perched on. She personally thought asking her to leave the ground in any capacity was just tempting fate, but the seamstress, Hanna, didn’t seem particularly concerned, and Annette knew better to argue.

“Straighter,” Hanna said, holding half-a-dozen pins in her mouth as she mumbled the order.

Annette shuffled around, not sure if she was doing the right thing. Hanna had done countless fittings for Annette’s mother while they lived in the castle, and a handful for Annette – she’d helped tailor her Officer’s Academy Uniform, the first one, before Annette managed to set her sleeve on fire _and_ spill fish stew across her skirt in the same fateful bout of cooking duty, effectively ruining the entire outfit. Annette secretly suspected that Hanna knew somehow, and held it against her. But it was more likely that Hanna had just never been one to mince words and that she held little deference for Annette as she poked and prodded at her.

“Well, it’s certainly long enough,” Hanna muttered, reaching for more pins as she measured the hem. “Unsurprising – I think Fantine has a good five inches on you, dear.”

“It’s easier to make shorter than longer, though!” Hanna’s assistant chimed from where she was making adjustments to the neckline of the dress. Isabella was a new addition since the last time Annette had seen Hanna. Annette wondered if she was her daughter; they looked rather alike. Isabella was smiles and optimism where her mother was deep sighs and muttered oaths to the goddess. “Speaking of,” Isabella continued, “do you want us to change the sleeves here? Longer sleeves have been out of fashion for years, but we could perhaps refit them –”

“Put the pins in just in case, but no promises,” Hanna interrupted. She looked up from Annette’s skirt to give her an accusatory look. “Three weeks for a wedding dress, honestly, what is your young man thinking?”

“I believe he’s very eager to establish himself in the Fraldarius Duchy,” Annette said, unable to keep the hint of apology out of her voice.

“Well that’s might fine for him, I suppose,” Hanna muttered darkly. “I don’t see why he has to drag you into his business.”

“Because we’re getting married?”

Hanna glared at her again. “All the same,” she said.

“I’ve heard the Duke Fraldarius is very handsome,” Isabella said cheerfully, pulling the waist of the dress a little too tight around Annette. “Is it true?”

“Felix?” Annette asked, suppressing a yelp as Isabella accidentally jabbed her with a pin. “He’s . . . yes, I’d say so.”

Isabella laughed, taking the squeak in Annette’s voice as her being flustered. “Our lady is very modest in her praise!” she sang brightly. Holding Annette’s hair back to get a better look at the her work on the neckline, she said, just as cheerfully but more softly, “Come now, I’ve never seen a Duke before. What does he look like? Do you like him?”

“You’re being impudent,” Hanna grumbled. She looked up. “And slapdash – you call those sleeves even?” Standing up, she brushed Isabella aside, setting to work pinning back the sleeves that she had sworn up and down she would have no time to work on. Isabella took a step back and grinned at Annette, completely unbothered by the scolding.

Annette felt bad, however, as if the squabble were her fault. She smiled at Isabella, softly. “He has the loveliest eyes,” she said, not wanting to ignore her, even if the young woman was teasing her. “They’re the shade of brown that looks gold sometimes, at sunset. And he has a beautiful smile, even though people don’t see it much. Every time it’s like he’s smiled for the first time, like he’s just learned how wonderful it is.”

“Is that the way he smiles at everyone?” Isabella asked, “Or just the way he smiles at you?”

Annette blushed at this, surprised, but she didn’t dare move her hands to cover her face – Hanna had decided to grab hold of both sleeves at once and was measuring them against each other by some inscrutable metric.

Annette saw the laughter dancing in Isabella’s eyes, and tried to stammer out any answer. “I – I’m not sure I understand –”

“You wanted to see me?” a voice called from the doorway of the room.

Annette jerked violently at the sound of Felix’s voice. Hanna caught her shoulders and pushed her back into place on the stool – she’d worked with Annette before.

“Felix!” Annette cried, her voice squeaking again even thought Hanna was much more deft at keeping the pins in the fabric and not her skin. “How long have you been eavesdropping?”

Felix walked into the room and stood in front of her. “Not sure it counts as eavesdropping if I announce myself when I walk into the room,” he said. “Feels weird to look up to see you,” he added before Annette could splutter an argument in reply.

“You shouldn’t be here!” Annette blurted out. Felix raised an eyebrow at her, and she had to continue. “It’s bad luck to see the dress before the wedding day!” She was pretty sure that was the superstition, or something close to it. Probably it only counted if the wedding was real, but she really didn’t need any bad luck right now. She also didn’t need Felix right now, looking at her with eyes that she suddenly remembered had flecks of gold even when the sun wasn’t setting.

“Okaaay,” Felix said slowly, “But Lissa said you had something you wanted to tell me?”

“Oh!” said Annette, suddenly remembering the offhanded message she’d given the girl that morning. For moment she had vaguely believed that talking about Felix behind his back had actually summoned him, somehow. “I do. I have good news. I think.”

“Great,” said Felix. After a pause, he added, “What is it?”

“Felix,” Annette said, still flustered. “This is not a good time.”

Felix seemed to realize for the first time that Hanna and Isabella were staring at him, Hanna absolutely glowering at his interruption and Isabella beaming with an expression that was self-satisfied for reasons Annette couldn’t possibly follow. He gave Annette a look that was almost panicked, for Felix. He looked between the three of them, awkwardly stuffing his hands into his pockets.

“Right. Um,” he said, taking a couple of steps back. “How goes the dress fitting?”

“Better before you got here,” Hanna said under her breath. “Bringing bad luck and making her fidget.”

Isabella spoke over Hanna before the sentence was complete. “Ignore my mother; she prefers to concentrate on her craft,” she said brightly, basking in the bewildered glare Felix swung around to her. She flung her hands out dramatically to indicate Annette. “What do you think of the dress?” she asked, evidently having no qualms about bad luck – or that the dress still hung off Annette at odd angles, dipping far too long over the stool she was standing on.

Felix blinked at Annette a couple of times. “You look, um,” he stuttered. “It’s very . . . flouncy?”

“Flouncy?” all three women asked at the same time. Annette narrowed her eyes at Felix, and he nervously took a step back.

“Yeah, it has a lot of . . . flounces?” he said, as if that clarified or helped his position in any way. “Very fancy. Just the sort of thing you’d want for a wedding.”

“The wedding is to be in two weeks time, right, my love?” Annette asked innocently, although she knew the answer.

“Two and a half, yeah,” Felix said, bracing for impact – Annette could see in his face that he wasn’t fooled by her tone at all.

“Then you have two and a half weeks to think of a better compliment than _flouncy_ ,” Annette said, her voice turning to ice. “I’ll find you when we’re done here; get out before you curse us all.”

Felix flinched. He gave a wild look to Isabella, who offered no help but looked even more delighted than she had before. Then, with the swiftness usually reserved for the battlefield, Felix darted forward, standing on his toes to reach up and kiss Annette on top of her head.

“I’ll be on the training grounds; can’t wait to hear the news,” he said hastily.

“Out!” squealed Annette, grabbing a pin from the side of her sleeve and brandishing it at him. Felix easily dodged her flails and hurried out of the room.

Hanna snatched the pin back from Annette with a string of grumbles about hours of work undone, never mind the fact she started pinning the sleeve less than ten minutes ago. Isabella let out a sigh of pure delight, kneeling where her mother had left off to resume pinning the hem of the dress.

“Oh, he _is_ handsome, you were right,” she said with relish. “And so romantically unromantic. And so _affectionate_ , I’m sure he must be –” she cut herself off as Hanna gave her a swift nudge with her foot, and mirrored her mother’s habit of holding pins in her mouth as she returned to work, blessedly keeping her from finishing the sentence.

Annette sighed. “Yes,” she said, “I suppose he is.”

Mentally, she added his careless, hurried kiss to her running tally – seventeen kisses to the top of her head. In the past week and a half, Felix had kissed her hand thirty times, her cheek ten, her forehead seven, and in what could only be deliberate aggravation towards both her and her uncle, her neck once. She had felt all the blood in her body rush towards her ears as she elbowed him, not particularly subtly, and although he hadn’t tried that again, the smirk he gave her as he pulled away had kept her up for half the night. _Well, it was your idea in the first place_ , he seemed to say.

He had not kissed her properly, or in private, since the night he’d arrived. Annette could only conclude that this meant he had only been teasing, or really had thought it was a sensible plan, or just wanted inconsequential revenge on her for embarrassing him directly before. In any case, he no doubt regretted the decision – his behavior towards her since that night had been performatively affectionate in public and cautiously tentative in the rare moments that they were alone. She wasn’t sure if her uncle had spoken to Felix – Gérald had certainly given her an awkward and roundabout lecture on the propriety expected of a young noblewoman a few days after Felix arrived – and she wasn’t sure if Felix would care if he did, but Felix also hadn’t visited her in her room following that first night. It became an unspoken agreement that this was an emergency solution, not something to be exploited on a daily basis.

Annette told herself that it was silly to mind that Felix’s affections were only for the benefit of an unacknowledged audience. Felix had already sacrificed so much to even be here; she deserved no such loyalty from either him or the Blue Lions. And she knew he was not gifted at artifice and that he disdained the trappings and etiquette of nobility, so having to play at being a courting nobleman, not to mention a traitor to the crown, must have been a kind of personal hell for him. It was already too much kindness for him to be here at all, to never (or rarely) complain, to sincerely be invested in bringing her back to Garreg Mach. She didn’t have the right to ask him for anything beyond that. Still, when Felix pulled her into that first kiss, his lips rough and gentle and searching and understanding all in the same moment, she had wanted more. She’d wanted a lot more, of that, specifically. And every time Felix kissed her cheek, his eyes sliding over to a nearby guard or her frowning uncle as he pulled away, Annette was reminded of the fundamental difference between what she wanted and what they had.

“Stand up straight,” Hanna told her. Annette automatically obeyed.

***

It was a few hours later when Annette finally made her way to the training ground, holding a book in one hand and munching on a pastry she had managed to steal from the kitchens to split with Isabella as the girl was preparing to leave. She briefly wondered if she would miss Felix entirely. She need not have worried; she spotted him in the center of the grounds as soon as she walked in, sparring with two soldiers in the Dominic army and evidently winning.

The training grounds at her family estate were much smaller than those at Garreg Mach, and Annette strongly suspected they were also meager compared to Fraldarius, a territory that was known for well-trained fighters. It mirrored Garreg Mach’s central fighting area and raised edge providing a border, but on a much smaller scale. Weapons hung on the far wall across from the entrance, resting above a selection of targets, and there were a handful of practice dummies in a nearby corner. But it was not a place where you could hold a tournament, or even a proper sparring match. When Dominic did sponsor tournaments, they would convert the large fields surrounding the estate into battle rings, usually in the summer or during festival weekends. It was actually an atmosphere Annette much preferred to the weekly, dusty tournaments at the monastery. But there hadn’t been much call for celebration in Dominic these past few years, and the cramped training grounds made for close-quarter fighting rather than expansive duels.

Annette self-consciously wondered if Felix found the entire setup sorely lacking compared to what he was used to. But in any case, she realized as she stood at the edge of the grounds watching the match unfold, he excelled at fighting in such a small space.

The rules of the sparring match seemed to be both of the Dominic soldiers against Felix. Despite the obvious imbalance, Felix held the advantage. Dodging an axe swing from the first soldier, Felix countered the blow easily. Although the soldier was able to parry, the force of Felix’s sword sent him stumbling back to the edge of the ring. Felix turned his attention to the soldier with a spear, matching him blow for blow as he blocked a series of attacks. Annette swore she saw him stifle a yawn as he made his counter, hitting the spear at the perfect angle and with enough force to knock it out of the soldier’s grip. With his sword extended to lightly rest underneath the soldier’s chin, Felix didn't work particularly hard to hide a smug, pleased smile as the soldier held up his hands, conceding defeat. Felix’s eyes briefly followed the soldier as he moved to the edge of the training grounds, and he finally caught sight of Annette in the entryway.

Staring at her a little too long, Felix was momentarily caught of guard when the first soldier swung at him again with his practice axe. Jumping back just in time to avoid the hit, Felix landed awkwardly a few steps back. The soldier pushed the advantage and gave a wild swing at Felix’s right side. Felix managed to dodge the swing, but the trajectory of the axe forced him onto footing uneven enough that he fell to the ground, his sword clattering loudly as he lost a grip on it. Annette gave a sympathetic wince as the soldier used his foot to pin Felix’s sword arm to the ground before he could grab the sword. The soldier gave a smug smile of his own as he raised the axe, pausing for a moment at the top of his swing to see if Felix would concede defeat.

Felix didn’t. Instead, he lunged to the side and grabbed his dropped sword with his left hand, which was not pinned. With a backwards sweep he brought the sword against the soldier’s knees, knocking him away and giving Felix enough time to jump back to his feet. He easily tossed the sword back to his right hand and swung again, bypassing the axe for a clean, obvious hit. The soldier held up his hands and laughed, admitting defeat with more goodwill than Annette was expecting.

“I really thought I had you for a moment there,” the soldier said excitedly, more delighted in how close he came to winning than disappointed in the loss. He held his hand out for a handshake.

“In a proper tournament, you would have,” Felix said, grasping the hand briefly before letting it drop. “Dropping a weapon is disqualifying; I lost by that technicality. But you can’t let your guard down or expect that kind of victory in the actual battle. Bandits don’t care about technicalities.”

The soldier looked sheepish, holding his axe tightly against his chest. “I’ll be on my guard tomorrow, I promise,” he said.

“There’s still hesitation in your swing. Follow through,” Felix said. “And plant your feet; you’re shifting your weight poorly.” The soldier nodded eagerly, turning slightly to wave his friend over to where they were standing.

Annette left her spot at the door to approach the center of the training grounds. Felix looked over at her, his eye catching the sudden movement. He turned to the two men standing next to him. “That’s enough for today,” he told them. “We’ll have more time to discuss strategy tomorrow.” The two turned to go, the axe soldier giving a sly glance to Annette as she walked by them. She tried to keep her face impassive.

As soon as they were out the training grounds, she punched Felix’s arm.

“I told you not to fight with your left arm,” she said, annoyed. “It’s still healing! Listen to Mercie if not to me.”

Felix winced and took a step away from her. “Well, punching it won’t help,” he muttered. “Unless that’s a new faith magic technique I’m unaware of.”

“I’m not punching you because it’s a good idea; I’m punching you because I’m _annoyed_ ,” Annette replied. Felix rolled his eyes and walked towards the back of the training grounds to hang up his practice sword. Annette followed; it wasn’t a very far walk.

“I barely used my left arm; I still can’t grip things properly,” he said defensively. “It was more for shock value than anything else.”

Annette looked back over her shoulder to where the soldiers had been standing. “What was he talking about, being on his guard tomorrow?” she asked. “Is something happening?”

Felix shrugged. “A nearby village is complaining about bandit attacks. Your uncle asked me to take a battalion out and see what we could do.”

Annette frowned at him. “You’re still injured; you shouldn’t be putting yourself on the front lines like that.”

Felix didn’t smile, but there was the ghost of a smile in his eyes. A self-satisfied one, which annoyed Annette even if it made her heart flutter a little. “You just saw that sparring; do you really I’m in no shape to be fighting?”

The worst part was, he was right.

“Bandits don’t use dulled blades, Felix,” Annette said instead of admitting this.

He jerked his head towards the center of the training grounds, at the memory of the earlier match. “That’s why I’m trying to make sure these guys know what they’re doing. I’ll stay at the back, don’t worry. But come on. Those villagers need help, and nearly all your officers are caught up in the war. Would you rather I stick around here and get yelled at for not knowing how to tell you that you look pretty in a wedding dress?”

Annette bit her lip. She was worried for him, of course, and frustrated that he didn’t take his own recovery as seriously as she did. She was also, if she was being honest, a little jealous that he was getting to leave and she was stuck waiting for him to return. But none of these were actually good reasons for him to not help out against bandits. She worried about her territory, even if she was technically trying to escape from it at the moment.

“If you die before the wedding, my ghost will haunt you,” Annette said, which was the closest she would give to sanctioning the trip.

“That’s not how ghosts work,” Felix said. But the hint of a smile in his eyes had made its way to his lips, and he seemed to understand that the argument was tentatively resolved, even if Annette wouldn’t admit defeat. He continued, “You said you had good news?”

“I have _maybe_ good news,” Annette corrected. She held up the book by way of explanation. “Can we sit down?”

Felix nodded and led the way to a bench at the far end of the training ground, placing his hand on her back to guide her. Annette took a breath and reminded herself this was habit more than anything else – in the past two weeks, Felix had gotten used to properly escorting Annette to places she was perfectly capable of walking herself. But it was a nice habit, all the same.

Taking a seat on the bench and facing Felix, Annette forced herself to refocus, quickly flipping through the book on healing magic that Mercie had sent with Felix.

“I need to know about your injury,” she said, not looking up from the book. “Tell me what you know about it.”

“Um,” said Felix, thrown off-guard by her question. “I mean, it’s my left arm. There’s a dull pain most of the time, I guess from the elbow down? That’s not so bad. The worst part is the grip – I can’t hold on to a sword properly, it’s like my fingers aren’t working the way they’re supposed to.” Annette tried not to roll her eyes that Felix would consider all injuries in terms of battle proficiencies. He continued, “I think a bone was broken initially but they patched that up pretty quickly. There wasn’t any blood – in terms of my arm, at least - just a lot of bruising. Mercedes said the main problem was nerve damage, if that helps.”

“That helps,” said Annette. She’d found the chapter she was looking for and she ran her finger down the margin of the page. “What was her recommendation for recovery?”

“We didn’t . . . we didn’t really talk about that,” Felix said. “I left pretty quickly; there wasn’t a ton of time for her to check on it. She just told me to keep from fighting until it was properly healed, and that it could take some time – don’t look at me like that.” Annette was indeed giving him a disapproving, I-told-you-so look, but she had other things on her mind now that she’d found her place in the book.

“You got this book from the library, right?” she said, knowing he had. “Look at what’s in the margins here.” She shoved the book towards Felix, eagerly pointing at the margins.

“Um . . . reasonably good handwriting?” Felix ventured.

“ _Mercie’s_ reasonably good handwriting,” Annette corrected him. “Look, Felix, she’s left me all sorts of advice. This is a chapter on healing long-term injuries. All these marginal notes are applying it to upper body extremities.”

“Arms,” Felix clarified. Annette nodded excitedly.

“Exactly! You wouldn't let her send me a letter, would you?”

“We’ve been over this,” Felix said, annoyed. “I can’t just carry around physical evidence of my loyalties to –”

“I don’t care about that right now,” Annette interrupted him, impatient in her excitement. “I care about how my best friend is beautiful, and talented, and figured out a way to tell me how to heal you.” She grinned at him. “It took me a while to get through this chapter – it was a ridiculous amount of theory about conceptualizing my relationship to the universe – but I think it’s worth a try.”

“Are you going to explain your relationship to the universe to me?” Felix asked.

“No,” Annette said. “Let me see your arm.”

Felix complied, rolling up the sleeve of his loose training shirt to the elbow and holding out his arm. “Do you need more than that?” he asked.

Annette debated this for a moment. The muscles of his forearm twitched as she placed her fingers on his wrist. For all of Felix’s worrying that being away from a proper training regimen was making him lose his edge, he certainly seemed in perfect shape by all the metrics Annette was familiar with. But that was not why they were here.

“No,” Annette finally admitted. “This should be fine.” She moved her fingers up to rest against his inner arm, took a deep breath, and tried her hand at advanced healing.

Her classmates who worked with physical weapons generally expected Annette to be equally talented at Faith and Reason, but Annette had always felt that they were fundamentally different, and that she was really only good at the latter. Reason, no matter how difficult, always cohered into a logical, explainable pattern that she could follow once she’d untangled it. Faith magic was more cryptic for her, asking her to tap into energies and consider fundamental relationships in a way she never quite understood. Still, Mercie seemed to trust that she could tackle this level of Faith magic, and Annette trusted Mercie more than she distrusted herself. Giving the open page and Mercie’s notes one final scan, Annette wrapped her fingers around Felix’s arm and closed her eyes, murmuring the incantation that she had practiced in her room repeatedly before making her way to the training grounds.

Annette felt, more than knew, that there was something fundamentally wrong at the center of Felix’s arm; some brokenness that she could make whole. She felt, more than understood, that the magic glowing from her hands was tasked with returning the world to its intended order, starting at the pressure of her fingertips and moving outward into the surrounding space. Mercedes always explained this within the context of the Goddess’s will and benevolence, but Annette preferred to think of it as an inherent _rightness_ , a kind of order that Faith sought to preserve, or restore. Still, she could write books of essays about how she was able to shape the air around her into powerful gales, concentrating matter into pure energy as she unleashed magical attacks. She had no idea how to put into words the feeling that something was _wrong_ underneath Felix’s veins, and that she was channeling a magic that could make it right again. She opened her eyes and found a major vein running down Felix’s inner arm, blue and winding across his pale skin. Slowly, she ran her thumb across it, following the sense that she was making a difference, that the world was slowly being restored to justice under the pads of her fingers.

The end of a Faith spell always seemed to hit her directly in the throat, making her gasp for air and lose track of her words as the so-called arc of the universe reminded her when she was pushing too far. Annette dropped Felix’s arm and pitched forward on the bench, bracing against the stone with both hands and struggling to breathe properly. Felix grabbed an elbow to steady her, but blessedly did not ask her if she was okay. Annette imagined that after years of watching her struggle through healing spells, he was used to their violent and unsteady tails. Instead of talking, he brushed her hair behind her ear on one side of her face, running his thumb across her earlobe with a slight frown as he looked at her.

Annette coughed as the world returned to normal around her. “I’m fine,” she said, answering a question he hadn’t asked. “It’s fine. It’s just higher level of magic than I’m used to.” She straightened back up, pushing herself away from the bench and immediately zoning back onto Felix’s arm. “How do you feel, though?” she asked. “Arm feeling any better?”

Felix tore his gaze away from her and looked at his arm in slight surprise. “Yeah, the pain’s kind of subsided,” he said. “Not gone entirely, but it’s – oh fuck. Fuck.” He held up his hand to his face and frowned deeply at it.

“What? Wait, what?” Annette asked, panic rising in her voice.

“I just feel like. . . I can’t bend my fingers?” Felix said, his voice a bit too calm to actually be calm. “My arm feels better but, um, this overall seems worse.”

“That . . . hm. That’s not good,” Annette said. “Go like this.” She opened and closed her fingers against her palm several times as a demonstration.

“Annette, I can’t, that’s what I’m saying,” Felix said. There was an edge of concern to his voice now. “Please tell me this goes away; if I can’t even _hold_ a sword - I’d rather just fight through the pain than –”

“Stop panicking, you’re making me panic,” Annette said hurriedly, cutting him off as she frantically flipped through the book. “Let me see, let me see . . . ah!” she said, excitingly pointing to a paragraph that Felix couldn’t possibly read upside down. “‘Restoration of this nature may result in inconsistent patterns of healing,’” she read out loud. “If the body heals itself faster than it processes its own healing, the responsibility of the caster is to guide it through . . .” she drifted off in concentration, reading over several sentences more than once to try to understand the remedy. Finally, she looked up, smiling at Felix. “I think I’ve got it,” she said. “We just have to retrain your hand how to grip.”

“That . . . doesn’t sound easy,” Felix said, unconvinced by Annette’s smile.

“It’s _so_ easy, don’t worry,” Annette said with more confidence than she felt. “Give me your hand.”

Felix held out his hand with minimal hesitancy, although Annette could tell he was vaguely afraid she would somehow manage to dematerialize his entire hand if she kept working. Annette looked down at the text and whispered the recommended incantation to herself, watching as her hand lit up with a piercing white glow. Slowly, she ran her hand over Felix’s, moving across the crevasses between his slender fingers. Starting with his pinky and moving inwards, Annette carefully bent the fingers, as if to remind the knuckles how to move. She felt heartened when she moved on to the ring finger and Felix was able to move his little finger without her assistance. Something in this spell was working, at least.

Annette worked in silence, trying to concentrate on the healing spell itself rather than her own thoughts. But she couldn’t crowd out the nagging reminder that this was an unusual injury, a bizarre one, in fact – and that she still had no real idea on how Felix had managed to hurt himself so badly. Or why he was so reticent to discuss it.

“So, are we going to talk about it?” Annette finally asked, looking very carefully on his palm rather than his face as she worked.

She felt his whole body tense up – or at least, she felt his arm tense, and extrapolated. “Talk about what?” Felix asked, his voice much calmer than the rest of him.

“The injury. How you got it. Why you got it,” Annette said.

“Oh. That.” The tension dropped from Felix’s shoulders, and Annette briefly wondered what he’d been expected her to ask him about. “I told you. Got in a fight with the Boar.” When Annette didn’t respond, frowning at his hand as she carefully bent his ring finger, he added, “He threw me against a wall.”

“Okay, but was it like, on purpose?” Annette asked. “When you first told me, I thought the entire thing was –” she looked around the practice grounds. They were too small to have anyone lurking, but talking about it in a semi-public space made her paranoid. She continued as if she’d finished that sentence. “But this injury is _real_ , Felix.”

“Yeah, well, he really threw me against a wall,” Felix said. She felt his hand almost imperceptibly pull back, and she knew that in normal circumstance he would absolutely be walking away from this conversation.

Good thing these weren’t normal circumstances, she thought to herself, slowly moving to Felix’s index finger and reinfusing her hands with the incantation from the book.

“Okay, but, why did he throw you against a wall?” she asked, trying to keep her voice even.

“Presumably to get me to stop trying to punch him, Annie,” Felix said sharply. “I don’t understand what part of this story is confusing.”

“Stop dodging the question,” Annette said, finally looking up to meet his eyes. “Why did you fight him?”

“I’m not dodging anything,” Felix said. This time he did pull his hand back, defensively closing in on himself. “What does it matter?” he added. The two glared at each other, letting Felix’s words and actions hang in the air, loudly contradicting each other in the shared silence. Finally, Annette firmly held out her hand, her eyes flicking down to Felix’s injured hand and then back up to him. He sighed and gave her his hand back, looking away.

Annette took his hand and worked in silence, trying to concentrate on the unfamiliar magic from Mercie’s book, rather than the host of horrifying reasons Felix might have finally thrown a punch at Dimitri, after years of snarling at him from a distance. It had been over a month since she’d seen the crown prince. After Grondor Field, he had seemed to be coming back to them. She’s finally allowed herself to hope that he would be able to lead the army to reclaim Faerghus, and that they could finally build a strategy around something other than his insatiable desire for revenge. This was the strategy she dreamed about as she fell asleep in her claustrophobic bedroom these past few weeks, the hope of victory she clung to with every letter she wrote but didn’t send.

“I need to know if we’re losing him again,” she finally said, quietly. Her fingers came to a rest on top of Felix’s palm, with her other hand still cradling his. “I’ve gotten through this month by dreaming of the day he retakes Fhirdiad. I need to know – I deserve to know if that trust is in vain.”

Felix hand flipped around her fingers to grab her wrist faster than she could anticipate. He leaned forward as he pulled her closer, pressing a finger to her lips and glancing around the training grounds nervously.

“We’re never alone enough to talk about the Blue Lion’s battle plans,” he whispered urgently. “We can’t, Annette, we’d put them all in danger, not just us.”

Annette pulled back slightly. His hand still hovered within inches of her face, uncertain. “I deserve to know,” she repeated. “If no hope is coming for Fhirdiad then no hope is coming for Dominic.”

Felix nodded slowly, and for a moment Annette waited for him to close the miniscule gap between his fingers and her face. Instead, he dropped his hand to rest it on his knee.

“You can trust him,” he said softly, almost begrudgingly. “It feels strange to say it, but your hope is not for nothing. My father didn’t die for nothing.” He shifted uncomfortably on the stone tile they were sitting on. “Our fight was . . . it was for personal reasons. Reasons I really can’t get into right now. Maybe, if you can, you could trust me as well?”

“Is this another way of dodging?” Annette asked after a pause. “Or if I trust you now, will you tell me, someday, when talking is a little bit . . . easier?”

Neither turned to look at the training grounds, but they both understood the caution and silence that Annette was referencing. Felix took a moment, but he nodded. “I can do that,” he said. “After the wedding, or – once we’re in Fraldarius. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” He looked down and his eyes widened with the realization that he was still holding her wrist with a vice-like grip. He dropped her arm, and flinched – his fingertips had left indentations around her wrist, white ovals slowly fading away into the background of her skin as he watched.

“What the hell, I didn’t think –” he said, trailing off as Annette rubbed her wrist absently, her face more curious than upset.

“You didn’t know your own strength?” she asked, looking back at him with a faint smile.

“I guess?” he said, looking at his hand and flexing his fingers a couple of times. They moved easily.

“That’s good,” Annette said. “That means the magic is working.” She stood up, grabbing the book from where it lay open behind her and turning to look down at Felix, who was still staring at his hand in a kind of shock. “It’s not an instant fix, so you still won’t want to fight with your left side until it’s fully healed. But this should hurry the process along, and we can keep working on it,” she said cheerfully, thrilled to think how proud Mercie would be if she could hear her now. "Faith magic this advanced can really mess with you, so maybe take a bit of time to figure out your grip again before you go holding hands with anyone.”

Felix scowled at her last piece of advice, but a blush was creeping up the back of his neck even as he glared at her. She turned and left the training grounds before he could think of a reply – and before he could see her laughing at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Absolutely no medical research was done to complete this chapter. My explanation for any follow up questions is "maaaaaaaagic."
> 
> I did send my seamstress friend about 45 zillion questions about how to tailor dresses. Absolutely none of her knowledge made its way into the final draft. So it goes, so it goes.
> 
> Anyways, I'm off to go play the first five chapters of every FE game ever because I guess we're fighting bandits next chapter. Hugs and kisses, write your best friend a letter to tell her you love her this week.


	8. Felix Leads a Battalion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some fights in this one! So just as a heads up, there is some blood and some broken bones, but nothing too graphic. I would call it “mild fantasy violence,” but you know, be careful as you go. Happy to make this warning stronger if anyone wants, but just wanted to throw that out there.

_“What are you up to, Fifi?”_

_“ ’snot my name,” the young boy replied, not looking up from the floor, where he had a board game spread out before him._

_“Oh, really?” the older boy took a seat across from the child, grinning to himself. “What is your name, then?”_

_"Felix. It’s Fe-lix,” he answered, still not looking up._

_“Huh. They sound the same to me. Not hearing much difference.”_

_“You’re mean, Glenn,” Felix said, looking up for the first time._

_Glenn relented. Felix was prone to crying if you teased him too much. He leaned over the board, changing the subject. “So it’s a new game, Fe?”_

_Felix seemed placated by the single syllable. He shook his head solemnly. “I got it for my birthday last year. The horse pieces are cavalry and these pieces are foot soldiers,” he said, remarkably articulate about battle terminology for one so young. “You control all of them at once. The goal is to take the center of the field before your opponent can.”_

_“Where’s your opponent, then?”_

_Felix frowned. “I’m just practicing. Ingrid said she wanted a rematch when she visits next week and I lost three times to her over the summer.”_

_Glenn smiled widely. “That's because she’s clever. Good for her.”_

_“You never take my side in anything,” Felix mumbled, pushing a horse across the board, then changing his mind and moving it back into place._

_“I take your side when it matters,” Glenn said cheerfully, standing up. “Come on, I’ve got something better for you than playing at battle captain.”_

_Felix frowned, idly holding the horse figurine a few inches above the map. “It’s not just playing. Stop calling it a game.”_

_“Sorry, sorry. I meant ‘practicing advanced tactical assessment,’” Glenn said, grinning as Felix puzzled over the words. “I’m just saying, Ingrid will be way more impressed if you can actually do something on the field, not just look at it from afar.”_

_“I don’t care about impressing her; I just want to win,” Felix said flatly._

_“That’s the spirit. Come on.” Glenn held out his hand to help him up, and Felix realized for the first time that he was holding two wooden practice swords in his other hand. “I’m not about to let my baby brother become one of those generals who stares at maps all day and can’t even swing a sword.”_

_“Father says I’m not supposed to spar against other people until I’ve shown I can do the basic forms and stances,” Felix reminded his brother, taking his hand._

_“Yeah, well, Father says a lot of things,” Glenn said as he hoisted Felix up off the ground and tossed him one of the swords._

_Felix caught it easily. Glenn gave him another grin, but this one was proud instead of teasing, and it eclipsed everything else in the room until, years later, it was all Felix could remember._

***

Felix lightly gripped the hilt of his sword as he walked. It provided him a kind of security that he’d been missing for the past two weeks. Out here, there was no trying to remember the proper etiquette for how to greet someone at dinner versus how to greet them at breakfast. No worrying that slipping up and mentioning Ashe too fondly in conversation would blow his cover and send him to some sort of executioner’s block. No reminding himself that Annette’s giggles and blushes were for show when they seemed real, he wanted them to be real, last night she had kissed his cheek after dinner and it was only because her uncle was there but surely her uncle had already sanctioned the marriage, she didn’t need to pretend and yet she was pretending and it was driving him mad one glance of her fingertips at a time.

His grip on his sword tightened, slightly. He concentrated on the sound his footsteps made on the dirt path they were walking on and on the light drifting through the forest canopy above him. Stronger. Faster. Never enough. Kill the enemy before they can kill you. Better yet, kill the enemy before they can see you. It was easy. It was impossible. It was all he was good for and he’d missed it so, so much.

“You got a lot of bandits over in Fraldarius territory?” a voice behind him asked brightly.

Felix turned his head sharply. Abel, one of the leaders of the battalion, had caught up to him. He had his axe slung over one shoulder with a easiness that seemed too practiced to be comfortable. Felix had been shocked when he met him to learn that someone so young was in charge of the group as a whole, but he had to remind himself that he had been younger when he started at the officer’s academy, and wartime didn’t really leave a lot of options for leadership. And regardless, Abel was a useful man to have leading the pack, as he seemed to have a better understanding of the surrounding area and paths through Dominic woodlands, and he was fairly confident he could lead them straight to the bandit hideout. He shot Felix a curious glance, clearly fascinated by him.

“We get our share of bandits, yeah,” Felix said. In truth, he wasn’t sure how the most recent year of war had affected Fraldarius; there had obviously been a spike in bandit activity after the war had broken out and dragged on, but he knew Fraldarius was better positioned than Gautier or, goddess forbid, Galatea.

“They’ve been really bad here in the past six months,” Abel continued. “Fawkes thinks that word’s gotten out that we don’t have the manpower to enforce the rule of law.” Felix looked over at Fawkes, who served as second-in-command and whose lance work was probably a little sharper than Abel’s wild axe swings. Abel continued, “They’re not wrong. Serving the Dukedom basically means serving the Empire these days; we’ve sent so many of our forces down south it’s hard to keep order closer to home.”

“War makes people desperate,” Felix said grimly. “Desperate people do desperate things.”

“Yeah, well, they may be desperate, but they can’t be more desperate than little kids or grandmothers, and those are the people who they’re most likely to take out,” Abel said stubbornly. “I don’t have much pity for desperation when you’re targeting the most defenseless.”

Felix was sure the village they’d just visited couldn’t be far from Abel’s mind. It was a ghost of a home, with the smell of smoke still lingering in the air and several buildings utterly demolished. Children hid behind their mothers’ skirts as Felix passed by; he’d tried offering an apple to a child in a doorway and felt a gut punch as the child wordlessly ran away. He’d given it to the older sister instead, who took it but didn’t smile as she curtseyed a thank you he didn’t actually want. The village leader, who looked about twenty years too old for the role and coughed every few words, explained that there had been no less than three bandit attacks on the village in the last two months. They had long lost anything worth stealing; at this point the violence seemed more of an end than a means to an end. It was a brutal scene; Felix wasn’t surprised that Abel was having trouble shaking it off.

“No sense in arguing over it,” Felix said evenly. “Our only job, really, is to find the defenseless, and defend.”

“They call you the Shield of Faerghus, don’t they?” Abel asked. “Or they did? That still apply with the regime change?”

“They called my father that. No one calls me much of anything,” Felix corrected him. “I’d appreciate it if you continued that trend.”

They continued towards the bandit’s suspected stronghold in silence.

***

_Felix dodged the first arrow easily and allowed himself a hungry smile. The archer had fallen directly into his trap – in order to reach Felix, he had stood directly on the bridge, and he was unable to retreat or counter as Felix rushed forward and quickly landed a hit. The archer jumped backwards before Felix could manage a follow-up attack, and let loose another arrow. Felix dodged again, but this arrow made contact, barely, scraping against Felix’s side as it flew past him. Ignoring the sharp pain and sudden cold cut of air across his ribcage, Felix launched a final, fatal blow. The archer collapsed, and this time, he didn’t attempt to move or retaliate. Felix kicked the bow away, not bothering to check if the man was dead. It wasn’t Felix’s concern if he was dead, as long as he wasn’t fighting back._

_Felix reached down to his side where the arrow had grazed his shirt. A thin trace of blood coated his fingers when he pulled away, but he was lucky that the arrow hadn’t been deeper._

_No. He was talented, so the arrow hadn’t gone deeper. There was a difference._

_Regardless, he now had a clear path to the bandit leader on the other side of the bridge, the same oaf that had tried to attack the boar months ago, from what he understood. He had little interest in Dimitri’s well-being – if the prince couldn’t fend for himself then he didn’t have much business being a prince – but he was eager to sharpen his skill against an enemy that Dimitri had described in lurid detail to a captive audience of Blue Lions over dinner, while Felix sat at the far end of the table and pretended not to listen._

_Absently wiping the blood against this shirt, Felix stepped off the bridge and drew his sword once more, ready to rush at the bandit leader._

_“Wait, Felix, hold on!”_

_Felix turned at his name, and at the creaking sound of the bridge behind him. He flinched as he realized the source of the voice was his small, enthusiastic, extremely clumsy classmate, Annette. Before he had a chance to ask her if she was even allowed on rickety bridges, she was halfway across. Felix tensed as her foot caught against a plank - if she fell off the bridge, he was pretty sure the class would find a way to blame him, somehow – but she turned it into a stumble rather than a fall and made it to the other side, looking entirely too pleased with herself given that all she’d managed to do was run a few yards._

_“Why aren’t you with the rest of the class?” Felix asked her sharply. The other Blue Lions had addressed the main line of bandits head-on, and if he squinted through the hazy canyon air he could see them crossing a different bridge, looping around to approach the leader from the opposite side._

_“Hey, the same to you!” Annette said. “I saw you running off and it was too late to keep up with Dimitri, so I thought, might as well follow Felix!” She giggled, and Felix wasn’t sure why. “I thought you might need help with that archer, but wow, you really took him out, didn’t you?” she continued excitedly, giving her arm a bit of a swing in a poor pantomime of Felix’s sword form. “Did that second arrow get you? I can patch you up while we wait for the others.”_

_Felix quickly turned from her and started walking away so she couldn’t see the cut across his side. “I’m not waiting for anyone, and I don’t need you to patch me up,” he said. “Stay back, and be prepared to run if these last few bandits spot you. I can’t take them out if you –”_

_He was cut off by Annette, both in terms of conversation and walking trajectory, as she threw herself in front of him and stared up at him with her arms crossed, planting her feet firmly as she glared._

_“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” she said, pulling herself up to full height, which only served to accentuate how short she was. “Those arrows are always poisoned-tipped; even if one didn’t get you head-on, it’s still going to do damage after-the-fact if it broke skin.”_

_“You study archery now?” Felix asked, suddenly feeling a sudden pain spreading up towards his shoulder. He cursed himself for being susceptible to Annette’s paranoid placebo effect. He tried to step around her, but she matched him step for step, blocking his path. If he picked her up and tossed her behind him, everyone actually would have a right to get mad at him. Still, if they were already usually mad at him anyways, it might be an option . . ._

_“Mercy’s been teaching me some basic healing techniques! The professor thinks it’s a good idea,” Annette said brightly. Felix couldn’t remember any teachers named Mercy at the school. He wondered briefly if she’d gotten Professor Manuela’s name wrong. She seemed flighty enough, at times. She wiggled her fingers at him cheerfully. “Let me try, okay?”_

_Felix rolled his eyes. “Just get this over with. And don’t set me on fire; you’re good at that, I assume.”_

_“Better at wind,” she said absently as she Felix raised his arm to let her look at his side. Her fingers glowed faintly as she pressed her hand against the injury, closing her eyes to concentrate once she’d assessed the damage. Felix felt the magic take hold at the wound and spread up his side; a peculiar sort of sensation that Sylvain had once described as feeling more like light than warmth. Felix shivered as the magic seemed to course through his bloodstream – he was used to more localized treatments, but this magic was chasing a poison that had evidently spread faster than he liked to admit._

_Before he could admit that she had been right – not that he would have – Annette broke away from him, doubling over in a fit of coughing. “Th-that should be b-better,” she said hoarsely, once she got her voice back._

_“Um. Are you okay?” Felix asked, not sure what else to say._

_She smiled weakly. “Sorry. Don’t worry. Faith magic can . . . I’m just not used to using it, yet! I’ll get better, Mercy says my progress is really quick – you should have seen me the first time I tried that spell; I think I actually blacked out for a couple of seconds!”_

_Felix frowned. He’d seen plenty of faith magic in action, but only from experienced priests and monks, who patched him up and sent him on his way with an efficiency that bordered on callous. He wasn’t sure if Annette was a special case or if all novice healers had the same side effects, but in either case –_

_“If you can’t use the magic properly, don’t bother healing me,” he said, turning to go, but not before he saw all the color drain out of her face in response._

_“But – I can’t get better if I don’t practice!” she protested, and Felix realized she kind of reminded him of an angry kitten when she scowled at him like this._

_“That’s not my problem,” Felix said. “Go find someone who actually needs it; I’ll be fine without you.”_

_He turned and charged back into the battle fray before Annette could splutter a coherent (and undoubtedly furious) reply. He’d only gone a few feet before he realized the bandit leader had already set his sights on Dimitri and was charging in the opposite direction towards him. The Boar was talented, that was what made him so frightening, and he was surrounded by allies. Dimitri would undoubtedly defeat the bandit leader before Felix reached them, no matter how fast he ran._

_Felix ran anyways._

***

Felix had put just enough distance between himself and Abel that when the arrow flew between them, it was hard to tell if the sniper had overshot on Felix or undershot on Abel.

_Amateurs._ Felix thought as the arrow buried itself into a nearby tree. Abel flung his arm out, stopping the line of soldiers behind them. Felix had already swung around to properly survey the forest, realizing too late that they were being flanked from the right by the very bandits they were supposed to be fighting.

“Ambush!” Felix managed to cry out before arrows flew at them in full force. Dodging another arrow that he suspected was from the same sniper, Felix positioned himself behind a tree on the opposite side of the path. “Advance; take cover where you can!” he shouted down the path to the soldiers, who were rapidly grabbing their weapons off their backs and running as soon as the words were out of his mouth, coupled with a hand signal from Abel. “Stay together, and don’t let them past you – we can’t let them surround us,” he continued, more to Abel than to the troops as a whole, who couldn’t possibly still be listening to him. He wondered how Byleth managed it; he could already feel his voice breaking at the back of his throat, and the battle hadn’t even begun.

He looked at Abel, who had hesitated before charging into the woods. He glanced back at Felix expectantly, waiting for him before diving into the underbrush. A good strategy – Felix had just told them to stick together – except that it left him completely exposed to arrows on the pathway.

“Go with Fawkes; he’s vulnerable to the left side,” Felix barked at him, pointing towards the lance which was already disappearing into the woods. “If they can’t get behind you two then – _get down_.”

Felix and Abel both dropped to the ground as another damned arrow sailed over their heads. Keeping crouched but luckily still keeping his head, Abel whispered frantically, “You can’t stay behind – what if more men are coming from the side or the path? You’ll be surrounded yourself.”

“No,” Felix said. “I’ll be the one who’s keeping _you_ from being surrounded. Go!” He resisted the urge to physically shove Abel towards the fray, but something in his tone must have convinced the young captain he was serious. Abel nodded quickly and was gone in a heartbeat. Felix settled himself into the first line of trees and pulled out his own bow, watching for opportunities for clean shots as the ambush coalesced into a central point of battle. As the archers were forced further back into the trees, the central path became less of a no-man’s-land – but Felix’s own shots became harder and harder to line up. He edged forward out of the trees, keeping an eye on the battle, forcing himself not to jump in sword-first and make up for where his battalion was sorely lacking. The tides seemed in Dominic’s favor, not the bandits, and he had a responsibility to guard the back line as well as a begrudging role as a tactician. And besides, he’d promised Annette he’d stay on the back line. He owed it to her to at least try to keep that promise.

“That sword’s too fancy for the ragtag remains of Dominic’s pathetic army,” a rough voice said from behind Felix. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen a noble brat around here.”

Felix turned swiftly, aforementioned fancy sword drawn before he’d even properly pivoted. Less than a stone’s throw away, a menacing silhouette towered above him. The man carried an axe on one shoulder and a chip on the other, and he sneered down at Felix with a derision Felix hadn’t seen since his academy days. Felix had no doubt he was looking at the leader of this particular group of thieves, and he felt his own expression contort into a scowl that was no less disgusted. For all his lecturing Abel about the desperation of war, the way the children in the village silently shivered at the approach of any newcomers was hard to get out of his mind when he looked at this cruel, sneering opponent.

“I see you know how to draw it,” he said to Felix as he took a step closer. “Try not to cut yourself on the swing – I don’t want you to get blood on it; it’s going to fetch me a good price.”

The problem with an ambush, Felix thought as he shifted into an offensive stance and waited, was that the back line never really stayed where you wanted it to.

***

_Felix took a sip of tea and stared across at his house professor. It was his favorite tea. The day was sunny and warm. Byleth had caught him off guard by talking for the better part of a quarter of an hour, not about battle strategies or sword techniques, but about the cats by the docks that she was trying to befriend. Felix had caught Byleth off guard by admitting that he knew several of them by sight, even if he kept his names for them to himself. It was, altogether, an extremely pleasant way to spend the afternoon._

_Felix wanted to be anywhere else._

_He usually wanted to be anywhere else, unless he was training. But he also didn’t trust the professor, not fully. He trusted her in battle well enough – she’d somehow managed to keep them all alive so far, and she clearly knew what she was doing. But he didn’t trust her to invite him to tea simply because she suspected a shared affinity for cats. No, Byleth was always playing two steps ahead of the rest of the game. She only asked students to tea if she wanted something._

_He set down his teacup and crossed his arms, leaning back in his chair. “Why am I here, Professor?” he asked her point blank._

_Byleth took her time answering, taking another sip of tea and carefully selecting a madeleine from the stack of pastries. Felix waited; he didn’t mind the silence._

_“Your father sent troops to assist us, you know,” she finally said, dunking her madeleine directly into her teacup before nibbling the corner. “Presumably as a thank you for helping with the uprisings in your territory.”_

_“Good for him,” Felix said unenthusiastically. The silence hung in the air between them._

_Finally, Byleth spoke. Delicately, carefully. “It would probably be best if they were led by a commander who was familiar with their training,” she said, casting a knowing look at Felix. “Fraldarius troops have a particular fighting style, I’ve noticed. It might be hard for other students to communicate.”_

_Felix very much wanted to push his chair away from the table and walk away without another word. But even he knew that such a move, while convenient, would be socially unacceptable. And wouldn’t particularly solve the problem, which was that the professor, for all her cajoling and cats, simply did not understand him._

_“Check with Sylvain, or Ingrid if she can handle ground troops from thirty feet up,” he said. “They’ll know the techniques.”_

_“Felix,” Byleth said. She didn’t have to say any more._

_“I work alone,” Felix replied. “It’s better this way. Use your resources wisely, Professor, isn’t that what you’re always telling us in lecture?”_

_“You’re never going to learn to command troops without practice,” Byleth said sternly, and Felix knew that this was a classroom, not a tea party, no matter how many pastries Byleth brought with her._

_“And you’re never going to win battles if you ask me to command troops,” Felix said coldly. “Do you want me to have a personal learning experience, or do you want to keep us alive? If it’s the latter, then let me do what I do best.”_

_“You can’t take down entire armies by yourself, Felix,” Byleth said, completely unruffled by his argumentative tone._

_Felix did stand up at this. His tea was done; what more could propriety ask from him._

_“Maybe not,” he said. “But I can get us a head start. Which is more than anything my father can send you.”_

_He was halfway back to his room before he remembered that he was supposed to have thanked her for the tea. A cat lazing in a sunbeam outside the dorm stairs looked up at him as he passed by, and Felix would have sworn its eyes were judgmental._

***

Staring down the approaching bandit leader, Felix suddenly, stupidly couldn’t help but think of Sylvain’s cheerful ribbing whenever Felix won a local tournament or sparring match.

“You just glare at them silently, waiting to strike. It’s kind of creepy,” he would say, doing a loose impersonation of Felix’s scowl for the benefit of whatever girls happened to be around.

Sylvain himself was one for quips, on and off the battlefield, jokingly asking opponents to surrender before the fight had even started or telling them to please move as he flung them halfway across a field. Felix had never seen the point in that – sure, you might distract your opponent, but you were far more likely to distract yourself, and anything that kept you from focusing on the fight was a thing that might get you killed. Still, in a strange, unexpected way, he wanted a shot at Sylvain’s nonchalant banter right then. Maybe the bandit was getting under his skin. Maybe he’d just been off the battlefield for too long. Maybe it would actually help. But regardless, he suddenly very much wanted to say something to let this man know that he’d picked the wrong swordsman, wrong village, wrong territory to try to terrorize. That Felix Fraldarius may not actually be Dominic’s shield, but his sword cut just as sharp either way.

“Shut up,” he growled at the man. It would have to do.

Felix lunged forward.

The last minute change in tactics did work to catch the bandit off guard, and he barely managed to bring his axe up to block Felix’s strike. In terms of raw strength, Felix knew he had the disadvantage – he could weather two hits if he was lucky, less if he was not. But he was comfortable with those odds. Working with a sword all his life had taught him that nothing was powerful enough to kill you without hitting you first. And, Felix thought smugly as the bandit’s return swing missed him by a country mile, he was extremely hard to hit.

Felix ducked forward, getting a sideways hit across the bandit’s arm. Blood tricked down to his wrist, but the injury didn’t seem to slow him down at all. The matched each other blow for blow for a moment, the bandit forcing Felix backwards down the open path. Felix begrudgingly had to admit that there was a reason this brute was the leader, and it probably had a lot more to do with fighting prowess than diplomacy.

The bandit leader shifted tactics, swinging an attack towards Felix’s left side. Felix brought up his shield and braced for impact. The axe bounced away harmlessly, but Felix felt an unpleasant twist in his left arm, a shudder of pain returning that didn’t match the exchange. Before Felix had time to fully process the information – remembering Annette’s stern warning that his arm hadn’t fully healed – the bandit picked up on the flash of pain in his eyes. A flash of a smile crossed the bandit’s face in return, and he swung at the shield again, harder this time. Sparks of pain shot through Felix’s arm, and he buckled. He realized his returning swing lacked the necessary power even before the bandit easily stepped back and readied another attack. This one, Felix blocked at an awkward angle, and the ensuing force knocked him sidewise to the ground. He barely held onto his sword as he rolled slightly to lessen the impact of the fall.

The sense of déjà vu from yesterday’s training session was not lost on Felix as he stared up at the axe swinging into position above him.

_There’s still hesitation in your swing. Follow through._

Abel looked too young to have developed much practical battle experience. He was clearly still unused to the horrifying lurch of staring into the eyes of a real, live human as you made your downswing. Practice dummies didn’t blink back. This bandit clearly did not share the same naïveté – or the same hesitation. But luckily, neither did Felix. He raised his shield to block the axe, bracing as the impact knocked him back into the dirt and another flash of pain travel up through his elbow.

He needed to buy himself time to get back on his feet. The bandit evidently had the same thought. Taking a step forward so that he was practically on top of Felix, he bought his steel-toed boot down directly onto Felix’s shin.

_Bandits don’t care about technicalities._

Felix gritted his teeth, trying not to cry out in pain as he felt his leg bend unnaturally against itself. He wasn’t sure if the bone was broken. He was sure he needed to get off the ground as soon as possible. The bandit gave a low chuckle as he raised his axe to swing again, satisfied that Felix wasn’t going to be running away any time soon.

Thinking back to the sparring session yesterday, Felix improvised. Flinging his shield to the side, he tossed his sword to his left hand in practically the same movement. Sending up a silent apology to Annette, Felix pushed himself up onto his good knee with one arm and swung his sword against the bandit’s legs with the other.

The bandit leader let out a roar of pain and stumbled, not quite falling but not quite upright, either. Felix took the chance to pull himself up and assume a defensive position, trying to assess the situation. He was backed into a corner up against a tree – he noted wryly that the arrow that had originally alerted them of the ambush remained lodged in the trunk several feet above his head. But even if he had the opportunity to rejoin his men, he didn’t trust his top running speed with the throbbing fire that was shooting from his ankle to his kneecap. His best chance out was, as always, by his sword.

The bandit leader regained his footing and ferociously swung his axe towards Felix. Felix avoided the blow, letting out a sharp hiss of breath as his dodge caused him to shift his weight to his injured leg.

The bandit noticed the flinch and chuckled to himself. “Not so easy to do the fighting yourself, is it, brat?” he asked in a low voice. “No mages following behind you to patch you up this time.”

“Thank the goddess for that,” Felix muttered to himself. This didn’t particularly strike fear into the heart of his opponent, but he could imagine Annette’s absolute fury she saw what his straightforward and easy afternoon mission had turned into.

Annette. Right. It wouldn’t do to die here. He needed an opening. It was difficult to gain leverage on the offensive when there was no way to shift around the bandit and a tree at his back keeping him from stepping backwards. If he could just get the bandit to _move_ for one moment –

An arrow flew over Felix’s head and lodged itself in the tree, splitting original the arrow in two.

For a moment, Felix cursed his poor luck, but an unconscious part of his brain forced him to look at the arrow again. It was a hell of a coincidence that it landed in the same place as the first – unless –

Unless that’s where the archer had been aiming. Unless they weren’t aiming at Felix at all.

Felix’s next glance took in and understood the situation faster than he would ever be able to explain it in words. He saw Abel, standing at the edge of the forest, already reaching to reload his bow. And he saw the bandit leader swivel behind him, looking for the briefest second to follow the arrow back to its owner.

The briefest second was all Felix needed. Using the tree as a springboard, he struck out at the bandit leader, relying on purposeful, powerful slashes rather than his usual quick and nimble swordwork. The bandit turned too late and parried to slowly; his one moment of distraction was enough to turn the tides. Felix wasn’t sure if it was his sword or the two follow-up arrows from Abel that eventually brought the leader down, but at the moment, he didn’t care.

“Idiot,” he whispered to the corpse at his feet. That wasn’t any better than his first try, but as neither the corpse nor Sylvain were going to provide feedback, he decided not to care about that, either.

Pain shot through Felix’s leg as his adrenaline ebbed. Sometimes – often – the end of the battle hurt a lot worse than the initial hit. Felix did his best to turn a wince into a grimace. It probably wasn’t better for moral, but at least everyone had come to expect it. He subtly shifted his weight to his left leg and blinked Abel back into focus. The young man was smiling at him – actually smiling, in the middle of battle.

“Sorry I didn’t take him out sooner!” he called brightly. “I was worried I’d hit you instead. Took a second to get him far enough away from you.” For a brief moment, he reminded Felix uncomfortably of Ashe. Or at least, the Ashe from a long time ago. Felix blinked that memory away, as well, just in time to see another bandit materialize from the woods behind Abel, who was still waiting for some sort of reply from Felix.

“Watch yourself!” was what Felix managed to give him, his voice hoarse from shouting but the command shouted nonetheless.

Abel turned in surprise and barely managed to block the blow from the bandit. Stumbling backwards, he fell into the path with a yelp, barely holding himself upright and not even thinking of a counter attack.

“Idiot,” Felix muttered to himself again, the venom gone in this iteration.

The adrenaline didn’t numb the pain in his leg this time, but as he rushed forward towards the skirmish, he had other things to concentrate on. Abel continued to take halting steps backwards as he shakily blocked the blows, but he was giving away ground with each continued attack. Felix caught up to the pair and, grabbing Abel by the shoulder, flung the boy behind him. Abel flailed, clearly not used to being tossed around an active fighting zone, but Felix finally managed to wrestle his way between Abel and the bandit.

It was then that he realized his he hadn’t picked his shield back up. And that his leg had slowed him down by fractions of seconds, even as he powered through it. And that he was forced to favor his left side even as he clutched his sword in his right hand. And that Abel was very, very bad at following directions and getting to the back of the line, in a way that Felix had forgotten was possible.

Felix wasn’t really sure which of these to blame as the axe came down against him.

***

_“Have you lost your fucking mind?” The question came with a upwards smack to the back of the head. There wasn’t enough force behind it to be painful, but Felix was glad that Ingrid didn’t wear gauntlets with her riding gear._

_“Language, Ingrid,” Felix said, throwing his elbow up reflexively to ward her away, scowling at her to hide his frustration that she’d managed to sneak up on him. They were off the battlefield, but he’d still been inexcusably unaware of his surroundings. When Ingrid didn’t move away from him, he sighed and pointed towards the weapons rack at the end of the Knight’s Hall. “Lances are over there if you want to spar. If not, you don’t have any reason to be here.”_

_“I think you throwing yourself into a horde of enemies without backup is reason enough to be here,” Ingrid snapped, still refusing to leave the small practice ring. Felix rolled his eyes and resumed his archery practice. It was tight quarters for bows and arrows, but there was just enough miserable rain outside that the Knight’s Hall seemed the best option. If he elbowed Ingrid in the face because she was standing too close, that wasn’t his fault._

_He sensed, more than saw, that Ingrid was putting her hands on her hips in sheer annoyance. “Don’t ignore me, Felix. What were you thinking out there?”_

_“She’s right, you know,” Sylvain spoke up from where he was leaning against the doorway. He clearly didn’t want to be a part of this conversation, so Felix didn’t know why he was bothering. “You could have waited five seconds for us to take out that demonic beast and join you; I don’t know what you were trying to accomplish charging ahead like that.”_

_“It was fine, I had cover,” Felix said, notching another arrow and taking aim._

_“You call those bushes cover?” Ingrid said, her voice sliding upwards as it always did when she was well and truly mad. “We have more robust cover in the flower section of the greenhouse. Seiros, Felix, sometimes –”_

_“Did you always swear this much, or is this a new development?” Felix asked, ignoring her argument. His arrow landed offset from center, just to the left of the bullseye. Not close enough. “It was a routine mission; I can handle myself out there just fine.”_

_“Routine doesn’t mean careless, buddy,” Sylvain said, and Felix rolled his eyes at his attempt to be the voice of reason compared to Ingrid’s holy fury. They’d gotten more coordinated but no more subtle over the years. The next arrow landed slightly to the right of the bullseye. He was always overcompensating._

_“None of them even landed a hit. It was fine. Don’t you have better things to do right now?” he asked bitterly._

_“Can you put that bow down and listen to me, for once, Felix?” Ingrid snapped. “We’re not trying to argue –”_

_“Could’ve fooled me,” Felix mumbled._

_“– we’re worried about you. You’ve been going off the rails for the last three missions at least,” Ingrid continued, even as Felix pointedly refused to acknowledge her. She went for the kill shot. “I know Annette’s not around to tether you to the group, but getting yourself killed won’t bring her back any faster.”_

_The arrow missed the target entirely this time, soaring over it and glancing off the stone wall of the Hall._

_Ingrid got what she wanted. Felix finally dropped his bow to his side and turned on her._

_“She has nothing to do with this, Ingrid,” he hissed, his eyes flashing with the frustration he’d barely been concealing up to this point. “I’m sorry I don’t think these ‘routine missions’ really matter given the situation, but if you and Sylvain can’t keep up with me when you’re on horseback and I’m on foot, that’s not my damn problem.”_

_Sylvain was suddenly between the two of them, his hand on Felix’s shoulder, lightly pushing him back. Felix gripped his bow and glared, angrier at how concerned Sylvain looked than at any of Ingrid’s barbs._

_“Settle down, Fe, we’re just concerned,” Sylvain said smoothly. Too smoothly. “We’re worried about her, too. But we need you alive if we’re going to find her, you know?”_

_Felix stared at the two of them. They didn’t usually work so closely in tandem against him. Frankly, he preferred the Sylvain and Ingrid that couldn’t go five words without bickering, not the Sylvain and Ingrid that moved against him and towards each other as if it was the natural way they should move._

_“This is ridiculous,” he finally said, shaking Sylvain’s hand off his shoulder. “If you really cared about us staying alive, you’d leave me alone and let me train.” The two friends stepped away from him wordlessly as he waved his way through and made his way to the exit. At the door, he turned and looked at them both, a deeply unhappy smile playing on his lips._

_“Six enemies, by my count, before you joined me, and not a single hit among them,” he said softly. “I would’ve thought you’d be impressed, Ingrid.”_

_The slam of the door drowned out any reply Ingrid made. Felix wondered, as he set up the targets on the training grounds and waited for the follow-up conversation that never came, if Sylvain had grabbed Ingrid’s arm to stop her from following, or if Ingrid had buried herself against him, angry and worried and hopeless, without him needing to ask._

***

The funny thing was, after weeks of pushing aside a dull, throbbing, inescapable pain in his left arm, Felix barely felt it when the axe sliced through him. Mostly what he thought about was how lucky he was to have practiced favoring his right side recently, so that it didn’t matter that his left arm hung limply at his side. “Lucky” might not have been the word everyone would use, but injured was better than dead. And Felix was not about to die that day. For one thing, if he did, Annette would kill him.

Stumbling backwards, Felix regained his footing and charged at the bandit, a man who clearly intended to take over where his boss had left off. Without the element of surprise, the bandit was outmatched. Still, either Felix wasn’t taking any chances or adrenaline had numbed his sense of scale – he slashed his sword in a wild frenzy, feeling his crest hum underneath his pulse, an electric shock that carried a dangerous power with it. Time seemed to speed up as he blocked, and struck, and dodged, and struck, and struck, and struck again. As he’d suspected from the beginning, it wasn’t a particularly fair fight, and it was over before Felix had truly realized it had begun.

Felix slumped against a tree, looking to see if there were any more skirmishes he needed to address. The pain from his leg seemed to shoot up through the rest of him, causing occasional stars to flash in front of his eyes if he put too much weight on it. One hand hung limp and useless at his side, the other grasped his sword so tightly that his knuckles turned white. The forest seemed eerily quiet following the chaos of the preceding few minutes. The remaining bandits, seeing both their leader and his second-in-command felled by the same remarkable force, were silently dropping their weapons in surrender.

Abel had regained his footing and was rushing over to where Felix was standing, looking triumphant and terrified and relieved and concerned all within seconds. He finally settled on concern. Felix opened his mouth to tell Abel to stop worrying about him and go help the rest of the men, but no sound came out. He realized, suddenly, that no sound was coming out of Abel’s mouth, either, even though he was clearly talking. And the forest wasn’t eerily silent after all – there was a loud buzzing, a clanging, a ringing that he couldn’t block out and that was stifling all other sound.

The ringing continued as the world around him swayed, and changed, and morphed into darkness. It became so loud that it blocked out sight, and light, and there was nothing left, except the darkness and the ringing.

And then, even that went away.

Some time later, there was music, and the lyrics didn’t quite cohere and the melody never found its center and it was the most beautiful thing Felix had ever heard. He’d heard it so often that it might not have been real, in the end. He followed it anyways, until the darkness was peaceful and the ringing was music and, at last, he could stop fighting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eh, he’s probably fine.
> 
> Everyone has their own headcanons for Felix and Glenn’s relationship and I guess I’ve settled on “Peggy and Angelica Schuyler”? Look, I don’t know how we ended up here either, but I’m sticking by it.
> 
> And listen. I hear you out there, saying to yourself, this is just four vignettes in a trenchcoat, pretending to be an actual chapter so they can get into an R-rated movie. You are not wrong, but also consider this: I do what I want. 
> 
> This feels like it took forever to get out but it’s only been a week? I guess that’s normal. Hope you enjoyed this trenchcoat chapter. Have a good rest of the week, everyone! If you live in a place with grey skies and snow, don’t let the weather getcha down!


	9. Annette Rearranges

Annette was reading by Felix’s bedside in the infirmary when he woke up the next morning.

“Don’t be mad,” he said as soon as his eyes were able to focus and he saw she was there.

“I’m so mad.”

Felix closed his eyes and rolled away from her. “I know,” he muttered. “Don’t be.”

“I don’t want to say I told you so,” Annette said. “But you’re absolutely the worst and I never want to speak to you again.”

Felix looked back. The one eye she could see had a faint trace of fear. “Really?” he asked, his voice still sounding far away but no less panicked for how drowsy it was.

Annette sighed and stared up at the ceiling. They’d evidently poured half a bottle of elixir down Felix’s throat on the battlefield to stabilize him, which was far more than any soldier would need in one dose, no matter how serious the injury was. To be fair, his injuries _were_ serious: they’d rushed him back to the castle last night with a deep gash across his left arm, an oddly bent right leg, and more blood loss than was advisable. On the other hand, Annette suspected the real reason he’d passed out was not from the injury itself, but from a stupid insistence the he could still fight while actively losing blood. Annette had taken care of the arm with the assistance of the castle clerics; the elixir had admittedly helped with the blood loss, even if half a bottle of it was excessive. That much concentrated magic tended to make you more than a little loopy when you woke up. Annette supposed she should be grateful her uncle’s men were so invested in keeping him alive. She personally wished they’d just left him to wake up and walk home on his own, so he’d learn something for once.

She didn’t wish that. She didn’t wish that at all. But he didn’t need to know that, right now.

“You said you were going to stay on the back lines, Felix,” she said disapprovingly. “You said you weren’t going to use your injured arm.”

“I did. I didn’t,” Felix said, which didn’t help exonerate him in any way. “He wasn’t paying attention; I had to shove him out of the way. You would’ve done the same thing if you were there, Annie.”

Annette snorted. “If I was there, I would’ve hit you over the head with your own sword. I tell you that your arm’s not healed and you come back with it practically hacked clean off. Over a _bandit_ attack, Cethleann save me.”

“Is fine, Annette,” Felix said, his voice still sleepy. “Look, I can move it just fine.” He flopped his arm up and down and smiled at her. “Works great.”

“No thanks to the healers we have working here,” Annette muttered, looking around to make sure they weren’t within earshot. “You’d think they were more concerned with fixing all the bruises on your face from how they fluttered around you. As if it would be fine to get married without an arm, as long as your face looked nice.”

“Oh. Are we still getting married?” asked Felix. He sounded genuinely surprised, as if he’d forgotten that part. He struggled into a sitting position and gave her another weak smile.

Annette sighed. She was pretty sure the elixir aftereffects would wear off by that evening, but her anger was also wearing off, and she was disappointed she wouldn’t get to be properly mad at Felix when he was coherent enough to argue back. There was no catharsis in yelling at confused smiles and puppy-dog eyes. “Yes, we’re still getting married, Felix,” she said, gently prodding his shoulder to get him to lie back down. “If you don’t get yourself killed before then.”

“That’s good,” said Felix, lying back against the pillows and closing his eyes with a smile. “That’s so good. It’s okay if I have bruises at the wedding, Annie; you’re pretty enough for the both of us.”

“I hope you _do_ have bruises on our wedding day,” Annette said darkly. “I hope you go out and get punched in the nose right before we get our first portrait done, and it hangs in the Fraldarius entryway for the next seven generations, and everyone knows that you’re a big giant dummy who fights too much and thinks too little, and that’s how they remember you forever and ever and ever.”

Felix didn’t reply, as he’d fallen back asleep. Annette heard stifled giggling and realized the other clerics had returned. She grabbed her bag and hurried out the door before they could ask any follow-up questions.

Stupidly, as she walked to the library she felt a pang of regret for not kissing his forehead goodbye before leaving.

***

Lissa was helping Annette dress for dinner when there was a knock at the door.

It still felt awkward to Annette that a huge part of Lissa’s job description was helping her get ready for things. She’d been practically a child when she’d left her uncle’s estate to attend school in Fhirdiad; children don’t need dedicated maids. And for the better part of the past year, she’d slept in tents and dorms rooms, eaten wartime rations, and darned her socks six times over to make them last longer. It felt insulting, if not to her then to Mercedes and Ingrid and all the other soldiers in Dimitri’s army, to be changing into an entire new outfit just to eat dinner. She was also, she thought, perfectly capable of buttoning up her own collars and pinning back her own hair. It had been less of a problem when it was just her and her uncle at dinner, as half the time she was locked in her room (by her choice or otherwise) anyways. But Felix’s arrival meant _expectations,_ and part of those expectations involved showing up at dinner, and looking nice at dinner.

She had actually tried to turn Lissa away that evening; she’d slept poorly the night before and didn’t have the energy to try to look proper that evening. But when she told her she’d be perfectly fine on her own for tonight, Lissa’s smile had been a little too knowing.

“I hope Duke Fraldarius’s injuries weren’t too serious,” she said sweetly. “Will he not be joining you for dinner, then?”

“He’d better not be; I just magically stitched his bones back together in three separate places,” Annette replied, narrowing her eyes at an imaginary Felix just above Lissa’s head. “Wait. What does that have to do with anything?

“Oh, I just thought, if he wasn’t there, it would make sense that you wouldn’t want to get too fancy,” Lissa said.

Annette turned her narrowed eyes over to the girl. “I don't dress up because of Felix.”

“You’re not dressing up tonight,” Lissa pointed out coyly. “And he won’t be there. Soooooo.”

As she relented and let Lissa into her room, Annette was suddenly very grateful to have been an only child.

She chose an extra flattering dress to wear that evening, one that actually did require Lissa’s assistance because the waist was so pinched and the bodice was so complicated. And it didn’t matter that it was Felix’s favorite shade of green, because he wasn’t going to be there. And it didn’t matter that he wasn’t going to be there, because she didn’t make clothing decisions based on him.

Lissa was pinning the last of Annette’s curls into place when the knock came, startling both of them.

“One minute!” Annette called, trying to keep still as she applied the last touches of makeup to her face while Lissa added an extra few hairpins for good measure. She frowned to herself in the mirror – it seemed strange for her uncle to bother meeting her before dinner, unless he had sent someone with a message. She was unhurried as she walked over to the door, tugging at the ends of her updo to make it a bit looser before heading down to dinner.

It wasn’t that she was surprised to see Felix standing in the doorway so much as she was surprised to see Felix standing at all.

“What are _you_ doing here?” she asked, which wasn’t particularly authentic fiancée behavior, but was authentic Annette behavior.

“I know we usually meet in the main hall, but I wasn’t sure if you’d wait for me,” Felix said, as if that explained everything. “I couldn’t find Lissa to give you the message that I’d be – oh! Hi, Lissa,” he said over Annette’s shoulder. Annette turned to see Lissa waving enthusiastically. For whatever reason, she adored Felix.

“No, I mean, what are you doing out of bed,” Annette said, crossing her arms and suddenly realizing how low the neckline of her dress plunged. She awkwardly shifted to her hands on her hips. “When I left you this morning you were barely fit to be sitting up, let alone walking around like you own the castle.”

Felix frowned at “this morning” and Annette wondered if he even remembered their earlier conversation. Maybe she’d have a chance to yell at him, after all. “I’ve been cleared to leave the infirmary, don't worry,” he said. “Two different clerics looked at me and said that dinner would be fine.”

“Did you smile and bat your eyelashes at them?” Annette asked sharply.

“What? No,” Felix said.

“Did you mumble and kind of scowl at everyone?”

“I mean,” Felix said. “I wanted to leave.”

“Ugh, I knew it. That’s even worse,” Annette said. “They’ll think you’re some sort of brooding hero now.” She looked back into the room. “Thank you for your help, Lissa,” she called over her shoulder.

Annette walked out into the hallway and looked up at Felix. The color had slightly drained from his face at the brooding hero comment, and she remembered his absolute outrage when Ashe had told him he was like a knight in a picture book during their school days. Annette made a mental note to compliment him on his remarkable honor in battle sometime and complete her revenge. For now, she tugged him forward towards the dining room.

“I absolutely do not sanction you being out of bed,” she told him sternly. “But if you faint on the way to the dining hall, someone’s got to carry you back to the infirmary. Let’s go.”

They walked in silence for a few moments. Annette quickly realized that Felix was limping. His leg hadn’t fully healed, that much was obvious. He probably shouldn’t have been out of bed at all.

“You shouldn’t be walking on that,” she said, even though she was sure he already knew that. “You can lean on me for balance, if you want.”

Felix looked down at her. “That’s not really the point of escorting a lady somewhere, you know,” he said. “You’re supposed to support her, not the other way around.”

“A fine time for you to take up chivalry,” Annette scoffed. “If you want to be a proper escort then don’t break your leg next time.”

“Was it broken?” Felix asked, genuinely interested. “I wasn’t sure.”

“In like _three separate places_ , Felix,” Annette said, glaring up at him. “What did you do, run halfway across Dominic on it? Fight thirteen enemies at once?"

“Okay, I ran maybe three feet after I hurt it,” Felix said, conveniently leaving out how he hurt it or why he thought it necessary to run.

Annette sighed. “And how many different people did you fight over the course of these three feet?”

“Only two, and one was really close to me to begin with,” Felix said. Annette shot him a look that was both skeptical and angry, a combination she had not realized was possible before she met Felix. “I thought you’d be madder about the arm,” he added sheepishly.

“I’m furious about the arm,” Annette said. Her skeptic-anger dropped for a brief moment as she remembered that injury, however. “How’s it feeling?”

Felix refused to meet her eye, but it was his own fault for bringing it up. She tugged on his sleeve – this arm, blessedly, wasn’t injured – to prompt him, and he finally muttered, “It’s fine.”

“Liar,” Annette said, and she knew she was right when his ears turned slightly pink. “All my hard work undone.”

“Don’t worry about it; I’m fine,” Felix said tightly. “I told you, they said I could leave the infirmary.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Annette said. “Of course they’d say that. They’ll let you do anything you want.”

Felix stopped walking and shot her a wary, confused look. “What do you even _mean_ by that?” he asked.

Annette took a step back from him and crossed her arms in annoyance, low-necklines be damned. “They all think because you’re a visitor, and you’re a duke, and you’re powerful, that you can just go around doing whatever,” she said, exasperated. “Maybe you think that, too.”

Felix’s ears were definitely pink now, although maybe more from anger than embarrassment. “I never said – I never _thought_ –” he started. He finally found a full sentence. “You have no right to think that.”

“I’ll tell you what I think,” Annette snapped back, her voice dangerously low. “I think you didn’t listen to me. I think you could have died. And I _do_ have the right to care about that, Felix. So don’t you go lecturing me about rights.”

Felix gave her a brief look of pity. “Look, Annette,” he said quietly. “I swore I’d protect you, and I’m going to. I’m not going to die before I can get you out of here, you don’t have to worry.”

His promise was sweet, in a way. But that wasn’t why Annette felt her eyes filling with tears.

“You idiot,” she said, and she couldn’t find more than a whisper for her voice. “I don’t care about _that_. Of course I don’t care about that.”

“Then why –” Felix didn’t even finish the sentence as he looked down and realized Annette was blinking back tears. His eyes widened in slight panic, and he glanced around the room as if it would somehow give him an idea of what to do next.

Annette had a lot of answers to his unfinished question: Because she cared about _him_. Because he’d always been like this, and always would be like this. Because he would jump in front of an enemy to save someone he didn’t even like that much, but didn’t seem to value his own life at all. Because he didn’t listen to her, and wasn’t listening to her.

“Because I wasn’t there to save you,” was what Annette finally blurted out. She was well and truly crying at this point; it made her feel foolish and small but she couldn’t help it. “I could have stopped him from hurting you, but I wasn’t there, I’m stuck _here_ and I just feel so – so useless.”

Felix finally found an answer from the room on what he should do. He pulled he into a hug, and Annette collapsed into him. As her hands came up to grab his shirt for balance, she felt like she could feel the bandages across his arms and chest through the fabric, which only made her cry harder. Felix stiffened at this, as if he was worried that he’d done the wrong thing, but Annette didn’t let go, and they were both content to stand there, equally embarrassed for completely different reasons, as Annette tried to channel her angry-crying back into plain old-fashioned anger. Eventually, she just felt tired – both of being angry and of crying.

“Listen, Annie,” Felix said in a low voice as her tears started to subside. “You don’t have to protect me, okay? That’s not something you have to worry about.”

“Yes it is,” she mumbled into his shoulder. “Yes I do.” She pulled back and looked at him. “Look what happened when I left you alone for five seconds,” she said, trying to smile and maybe succeeding.

“Don’t worry about it,” Felix said. “You patched me up just fine. See?” He waved his left arm up and down. “Works great.” Annette realized he might have remembered more of their morning conversation than he was willing to let on.

Annette let out an unexpected, if slightly bitter, laugh. “And hey,” she said, stepping back to him. “We’re still getting married.”

“So I’m told,” Felix said, pulling her back into the hug. “Only two more weeks of this, and once we’re in Fraldarius, you never have to worry about me again, okay?” he said.

Annette buried her face against him so he wouldn't see her crumble for the second time that day.

“Only two more weeks,” she repeated, though her voice was too muffled to hear properly

***

Gérald was remarkably less worried about Felix’s recovery than Annette, and was content to treat his half a day’s rest in the infirmary as more than enough time for recovery. Annette personally thought this was ludicrous, and that it was even more ludicrous that this was the first point in weeks that Felix and her uncle seemed to agree on. Gérald Dominic didn’t have a whole lot of say in the appropriateness of the match in terms of personality, not when it was such a wholly appropriate match in terms of political advantage. But Annette suspected he would have liked a nephew-in-law that was more conversational, one who paid attention to the etiquette of nobility and paid respect to a man so many years his senior. The way Felix protectively pulled Annette closer whenever he noticed her uncle looking over at them probably didn’t help the situation. Annette wasn’t entirely sure why Felix had such a petty vendetta against Gérald, but she suspected both men would be relieved once the wedding was over and they could return to living in separate territories.

Of course, she would also be relieved, but for an entirely different set of reasons.

The mission against the bandits seemed to alleviate some of the ill will between them, at least. Over dinner, they kept slipping into conversations about the battle, which her uncle seemed to have decided was a complete success, in that it successfully broke up that particular gang of thieves. The glare Annette leveraged at both of them whenever they seemed too pleased with a mission that almost killed Felix swiftly quieted conversations on that topic. As servants brought out dessert and tea and conversation on wedding plans dulled, her uncle suggested they take the conversation to his study and more officially debrief on the events of the previous day, effectively leaving Annette behind so she could no longer glare at them. Felix slid his plate of trifle over to Annette with an apologetic smile, and she gave him another proper scowl as she took the plate and scooped the dessert next to her own. She was mad, not stupid. Felix almost managed to hide his smirk as she looked back at him.

“I’ll meet you on the balcony when we’re done?” he asked, leaning over to kiss her cheek. Annette knew which balcony he meant – it was his favorite vantage point in the castle; you couldn’t actually see Fraldarius from there but it did face in that direction.

Annette swerved to avoid the kiss. The trifle was a point in his favor but the smirk was two points against him. “I don’t want to take a walk tonight, not with your leg like that,” she said. “I’ll wait outside the study; we can think of something there.”

Despite the swerve, he still managed to kiss her ear before pushing back from the table and following after her uncle. She tried to keep her scowl on her face and her hand away from her ear until after he left. Once the door closed behind them, she absently ran her finger across her earlobe and hummed to herself while she finished dessert.

She didn’t have to wait long outside of her uncle’s study, and for once, she didn’t bother eavesdropping – Felix would tell her what they talked about if it was important. She stared at a picture of her great-great-great-aunt Adelais Dominic, and tried to remember how she was related to was related to Alma Dominic, her other favorite family portrait, as they looked remarkably alike. She was trying to remember how to determine if someone was your second or third cousin when the door to the study opened and her uncle ushered Felix out the door.

“I’ll confirm with my steward, but we should head out fairly early,” he was telling Felix as they walked out. “It might be before breakfast.” Felix gave a monosyllabic reply of some sort. With a nod to Annette, her uncle walked away. Annette rounded on Felix immediately.

“Heading out where? And when?” she asked him accusingly. “You can’t possibly be leading another mission.”

“Tomorrow. Relax, it’s nothing to do with fighting,” Felix said, joining her to look up at the portrait. “Your uncle wants to take me along on some ‘diplomatic business.’” With this, he held his fingers up in mock quotation marks.

“Why are you doing that with your hands? Is it _not_ diplomatic business?” Annette asked, still suspicious that it was, in fact, somehow a fight.

Felix chuckled to himself. “No, he just wants me to tell you that. He’s taking me to a nearby town to make me buy you a ring.” He squinted up at the painting. “What kind of stuff do you like, by the way? She’s got rubies, right? Those look pretty nice.”

“Felix!” Annette said, horrified. “You can’t just _ask_ in advance; it should be a surprise.”

Felix frowned. “Why? It would be easier if you just told me what you want.”

“You are the most singularly unromantic person I’ve ever met in my life,” Annette said with a sigh.

“I’ve been called worse,” Felix said, but he dropped the question of rings. He pointed to the portrait again. “She kind of looks like you, you know. Same eyes. Your smile is better, though.” Adelais glowered even more fiercely than Alma.

Annette didn’t have time to decide if this was a sincere compliment or not. “Did you say my uncle was going with you tomorrow?”

Felix looked back down from the painting. “Yeah, I don’t think he trusts me to go on my own – oh goddess, what are you scheming? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Annette grabbed his hand and pulled him down the hallway, shoving him into a decorative alcove and nearly upsetting a vase of decorative flowers on the decorative table in the process. Felix caught it just in time, having either more respect for ornamentation or simply better hand-eye coordination.

“If you see anyone coming, just pretend to kiss me,” she told Felix in frantic, low whisper.

“Right,” Felix said. “Are you okay?"

Annette looked down the hallway and ascertained that no one was coming. “I’ve been trying to figure out where my uncle keeps his keys to the dungeon,” she said by way of answering Felix’s question. “The guards don’t have it, and I don’t think he keeps it on his person. It’s got to be either in his bedroom or in his study.”

“Logical places, but I don’t see what that has to do with paintings of your grandmother,” Felix said, raising an eyebrow.

“Leave Adelais out of this; I'm talking about your diplomatic trip tomorrow,” Annette said. “My uncle hasn’t left the castle in _weeks_ ; all of his reports are delivered to him personally and he hasn’t needed to leave on business. If you can keep him distracted all morning, I’ll have a chance to investigate.”

Felix nodded in understanding. “You’re going to get caught breaking into your uncle’s study,” he supplied helpfully.

“No, I’m going to successfully break into his bedroom, and get the keys, and save the day,” Annette corrected him. “Using all my assassin stealth moves.” She waved her hands in an approximation of Ashe or Felix practicing fighting with daggers and she knocked into the vase again. Felix caught it and set it on the floor.

“It’s safer there,” he answered her questioning eyebrow. “So what happens when he realizes the key is gone?”

“He won’t realize that; why would he check that?” Annette said. “Once we have it –” here she peered down the hallway once more before stepping closer to Felix and lowering her voice again “– we can leave the same night we get it. Overwhelm the guards and escape. We’d be back in Garreg Mach by next week rather than next month. And we don’t have to get married this way. Everyone wins.” Her father could return to Dimitri’s side; she got her freedom from the castle; Felix didn’t have to play at being an adoring fiancé anymore. It really was what everyone wanted.

Felix stared down at her with an expression she couldn’t quite read. She was about to scold him for not supporting her plan when he reached out and tucked a stray strand of her hair behind her ear – she must have knocked a curl lose during her assassin moves demonstration.

“I’ll look at every ring in the damn marketplace, in that case,” he said quietly. “If you think this will work.”

Annette nodded eagerly, stepping back to let him out of the alcove.

“Were you serious about not taking a walk tonight?” Felix asked her. “My leg is fine, I swear.” They had quickly found that spending the evening in the family parlor was often just an awkward extension of the dinner, as Gérald glared at Felix from a corner desk as he wrote letters and balanced ledgers. There was always a danger of being overheard on a walk, so conversation was still curtailed, but it was better than sitting on opposite ends of the couch and barely knowing what to say to each other. Plus, Felix was getting better and remembering the names of flowers, which Annette found very charming.

She wasn’t swayed by flowers tonight, however. “Your undying love for me may be a façade, Felix,” she said, “But your injury is real. Just, for once, let’s just do something that involves not moving.”

“Do you have anything in mind?” Felix asked. He offered her his arm, and they began to walk towards the central entry hall.

“Let me think,” Annette said slowly. “Do you have any letters you need to write?”

“I mean, yes, but I don’t want to,” Felix replied. “I need a couple days to figure out how I’m going to spin this injury to Matthew.”

“Let me write to him about it,” Annette suggested.

  
“Absolutely not.”

“So not letters,” Annette continued. “Ummm . . . do you have any ideas?”

Felix thought about it for a moment. “You’re still working your way through those books; we could always read,” he said. “Or we could play chess – actually no, scratch that one, I hate strategy games. You could always sing.”

“What?” Annette asked, surprised.

  
“You have a piano somewhere, don’t you?”

“We do, but I can barely play it,” Annette said. “Besides, that would be so embarrassing.”

Felix shrugged slightly. “I don’t know,” he said. “I think it would be nice.”

Annette didn’t point out that this was because he wasn’t the one doing the singing. “Reading might be nice,” she said instead. “Maybe not spellbooks, though; those would put you to sleep.”

“Why would I be reading them?” Felix asked.

They’d reached the main hall, so Annette stopped walking. She looked up at Felix, disappointed. “Oh,” she said. “Sorry, I just figured we would read something together.” It was a favorite hobby for her and Ashe and Ingrid, to curl up in a corner of the Garreg Mach library and read stories of knights and warlocks and princes out loud for a whole lazy Sunday afternoon. Mercie joined on occasion; Sylvain had been unanimously banned for his running commentary. But Annette remembered that Felix had occasionally been dragged along, usually when Ingrid or Ashe agreed to spar with him afterwards, or if Annette intercepted him on her way to the library and was able to change his mind about training plans.

It was one of her favorite pastimes, but even as she suggested it she remembered that Felix just sat in a chair with his arms crossed every time, refusing to take a turn reading and rolling his eyes during any of the more poetic passages.

“Dumb suggestion, we don’t have to,” Annette said quickly, but Felix spoke at the same time:

“Oh, right. Like at Garreg Mach.”

They stared at each other for a moment, waiting for the other person to continue. Felix finally did. “Sure, why not,” he said. “Can I meet you in the library in fifteen minutes or so? I need to go grab something from my room.”

Annette let out a squeak of excitement, then clasped her hands over her mouth, embarrassed.

“I’ll take that as a yes?” Felix said, before turning to walk away. Annette regained her composure and called after him.

“Hey Felix?” she said. “Make it thirty minutes. I want to set some things up.”

***

“Absolutely not.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Annette whined, slightly pulling on Felix’s elbow in protest as she leaned on him. She thought she had a pretty comfy setup going on. Lissa had found an absurdly large and fluffy blanket in a back closet somewhere, and Annette had stacked her favorite library couch with the blanket and pillows after dragging it just the right distance from the fireplace to not be too hot but still have a perfect view of the fire. She’d stacked a pile of books that she figured would annoy Felix the least amount (mostly stories where the knight died gruesomely at the end and the moral was that life is unfair) next to a pot of mint tea and two mugs on the side table. Lissa had helped her drag an oversized armchair next to the couch, so she could read to Felix while he drank tea and – she hoped – drifted off to sleep. It was _her_ ideal way to recover from an injury, so she was a little bit annoyed that Felix balked so obviously when he walked into the library fifteen minutes after Lissa left.

“Annette, you’re treating me like I’m on my deathbed,” Felix said, running his hand through his hair in exasperation. Loose strands of hair settled around his ears, making him look even more bewildered by the situation.

“It’s what you deserve,” Annette muttered under her breath. Louder, she added, “I think it’s nice! It wouldn’t kill you to relax a bit, you know.”

“I’m not just going to lay there while you stare at me! I got enough of that from the clerics all afternoon,” Felix grumbled.

“Well, if you don’t like my idea, then _you_ come up with something!” Annette said. She dropped Felix’s arm and walked over to the couch, collapsing into it in a sulk. “You said you wanted to read! I’m sorry I like to be _cozy_.”

Felix rolled his eyes. “I never said I don’t want to read; you’ve just turned the library into a second infirmary.”

“It’s a _couch_ and you’re a diva. Like I said, if you don’t like my idea then you – eep!” Annette gave out a small shriek as Felix leaned down and scooped up off the couch. She probably meant to snap something like “put me down right this instant” at Felix, but after a full day of medical analysis, what actually came out was a strangled, “Your arm is _injured_ , Felix!”

Felix gave another exasperated sigh and dropped his left arm, balancing Annette against him with just his right. Annette was too shocked to realize he could actually do that to come up with any more protests, although she did fling her arms around his neck for balance. With his now-free hand he reached out and snagged the oversized blanket from the couch. It cascaded like royal regalia or a wedding train as he yanked it from the couch and onto the floor, and in one swift movement, Felix settled Annette on the floor on top of the blanket and took a seat next to her, tucking the ends of the blanket around her shoulders and grabbing onto the other side to pull it around him.

“We have a fireplace like this in the Fraldarius library, you know,” he said conversationally, as if he hadn’t just flung her around the room and undone her hardest work as an interior designer. “This is how I would sit and read as a kid. I think the blanket’s even kind of the same color.” He gave her a quick, sideways glance. “Still cozy, right?”

“I . . . still think my idea was good,” Annette said. Her voice wavered slightly at the end. She suddenly felt flustered as she realized how far she had to crane her neck to meet Felix’s eyes; he was ridiculously close to her right now. “But I guess I can agree to a compromise.”

Felix shifted away from her to look at her more fully. Reaching out, he tucked the edges of the blanket around her more. She absently reached up and caught the edge of the blanket as he pulled it down around her shoulder, and she bumped into his hand in the process. Felix’s gaze softened as he slowly brushed his thumb across her knuckles. It was something that happened a lot, with Felix, even when they were back at school together. If he was grabbing her arm to keep her from tripping or brushing her hair behind her ear as she frantically tried to straighten it after falling asleep studying, his thumbs always seemed to linger longer than the rest of his fingers, calloused edges tracing roughly and lightly for a fraction of a second longer. Annette found it oddly comforting; it was something that tethered her to the world, briefly reminding her that Felix was there no matter what panic she’d managed to work herself into.

But as Felix pulled his hand away (thumbs and all) that evening, Annette had a sudden, desperate flash of worry that she couldn’t explain fully. It wasn’t enough to be momentarily reminded that Felix was there, not when she’d spent half the night pressing white magic against his cold skin and praying that the goddess would make his breathing less shallow. She needed something more to anchor Felix to the world, to convince her that he wasn’t going to fade away at any moment. She wanted to pull him back to where he was too close for her to think properly, and to bury her fingers in his hair and her head against his chest, and to feel his warmth under her hands and his heartbeat beside her ear and his breath on her neck until she was sure he was real, and safe, and alive against her.

Annette took in a sharp breath, snapping herself back into reality. What was she _doing_? Felix scowled at even the slightest worried look; he pushed away any show of concern as if it were a personal offense. They’d almost gotten into a fight over a couch and a pile of pillows. The concern that had kept her up most of the night, her desperation to confirm that Felix was okay – even if Felix didn’t consider these reactions actively insulting, he would certainly consider them annoying. She wanted too much, from too little, always. He offered her a brief moment of softness and a steady promise of friendship and she responded with outsized worry and girlish infatuation. She had to think about something, anything else besides his offhanded strength and his careless smile and his damn _thumbs_ and –

“Books!” she finally blurted out, her voice high and strained on the single word. “We should . . . books,” she said for clarification. “We should read books.” She twisted behind her towards the pile of books she’d left on the coffee table, getting even more tangled in the oversized blanket than she already was.

“Books. Right,” Felix said, and Annette could practically hear the raised eyebrow in his voice as she flailed to get away from him. He added, “Um. I also brought one, if that’s, well, easier for you.” Annette looked back as he leaned over and snagged a leather-bound book from its resting place on a nearby armchair, where he must have tossed it down when he first came in and started bickering with her about seating arrangements.

“You brought a book?” Annette asked from within her tangle of blankets, still halfway twisted to get to the coffee table behind her. “Why do – where did you even get it from?” She didn’t recognize it from her uncle’s collection, and she’d spent a good part of her adolescence in this library.

“I brought it with me from Fraldarius,” Felix said, watching Annette struggle to get back to how she was sitting before. “I thought you might be interested in it.”  
  
“It’s another spellbook?” Annette asked. She was only halfway through the ones he’d given her on the first night; Ashe had sent some dense reading. “I wasn’t really planning on studying tonight, but I mean, if you want, that’s always fun.”

Felix shook his head. “Only you would call studying fun and probably mean it, but no, it’s not a theoretical text.” He looked down at the book and ran a hand across the cover. “This was my favorite book growing up; I remembered it when I was packing to come here and I thought maybe you’d like it. I don’t know. We don’t have to read it if you have something better. It’s not that great of a book.”

Felix’s stumbled attempts to retract his own offer just made Annette more curious, and she was pretty curious to begin with. The elaborate cover implied some legend of old. That Felix actually had a knight’s tale that he liked – and that such a tale made him think of _her_ – was more intriguing than any of the worn down books she had pulled from the library shelves that evening.

“We can read that one,” she said with a smile, tucking her hair behind her ears as she shifted back to a seated position on the blanket. “Since you brought it all this way and everything.” She leaned forward eagerly as Felix opened up the book to the title page, written in a fancy script across the worn, dog-eared paper.

“ _The Renowned and Timeless History of . . . Sir Horatio and the Bog Witch_ ,” Annette read out slowly. She blinked at the title a couple of times to decide if she’d misread it, then glared up at her reading companion.

“I remind you of a bog witch?” she asked incredulously.

“What? No! What?” Felix asked in quick succession, looking up from the book.

“You said this book reminded you of me, and it’s about a _bog witch_ ,” Annette said grumpily, crossing her arms.

“No, I just said I thought you would _like_ it,” Felix said. “No one in this book reminds me of anyone.” He narrowed his eyes. “I’m beginning to see why you and Ashe get along so well; he does the same thing.”

“Ashe and I get along,” Annette said primly, “Because he’s _nice_ and doesn’t imply that I'm a bog witch.”

“I didn’t imply . . . gods above,” Felix started to raise his hand to cover his face, but seemed to think better of it at the last minute. He scrunched his eyes closed instead, which Annette personally thought was still unnecessarily annoyed behavior, given her reasonable complaint. “What if I told you that you reminded me of Sir Horatio?” he asked. “You like knights, right? Does that help the situation?”

“I want to remind you of an extremely gorgeous and talented sorceress,” Annette said. “Or a princess.”

“Who’s the diva now?”

“Still dwelling on that one, huh?” Annette asked him, and when Felix opened his eyes and looked down at her, she didn’t even try to hide how pleased she was with herself as she grinned up at him.

“We can, um, we can read something else,” he muttered, starting to shut the book.

“No, now I’m curious,” Annette said, as if she hadn’t been curious from the moment Felix mentioned he had a book in mind. She quickly rested her hand on the book to keep him from closing it. “You have to start the reading, though,” she added, to give the impression of negotiation. “You clearly know this story better than I do.”

“Oh. Sure, I guess,” Felix said. For a brief moment, Annette thought she saw a flash of alarm in his eyes. He picked up the book and cleared his throat. “The Renowned History of Sir Horatio, Esteemed Knight of the Realm, and Lucretzia Hoppentoad, Esteemed Witch of the B – sorry, do you want to see the book so you can follow along?” He cut himself off before he’d even gotten a sentence in. “I’m not great at reading out loud.”

“I thought you were doing alright,” Annette reassured him, but Felix had already shifted the book downward between the two of them, and she shuffled towards him to get a better look at it. She was back to the proximity that made thinking difficult, so reading along was absolutely out of the question, but knowing she could see the page evidently took the pressure off of Felix. He seemed to relax slightly as he resumed his reading, and, responding to Annette’s fidgeting to find a way she could see the book and still be comfortable, he slid his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. Annette now had a perfect view of the book and absolutely no memory of how alphabets worked. She settled for pulling the blanket around her a little more snugly and listening to Felix’s interpretation of the tale.

It was actually quite an interesting story, and one Annette hadn’t heard before, despite the voracious reading habits of her youth. As Felix had noted, Sir Horatio wasn’t anything like Felix – he was kindhearted to a fault and eager to be loved by the people of the kingdom, and his early adventures were of selfless acts of saving kittens from trees while battling rogue knights twice his size. The Bog Witch did bring out the worst in him, however. She was hardly impressed by him, or Loog, or even the kingdom as a whole, and by the time they got to chapter 3, Horatio had begun an enthusiastic, impossible quest to convince her of his worthiness to the land.

Felix undersold himself as a reader. He had none of Sylvain’s flair for the dramatic or Ashe’s earnest storytelling ability, but there was something captivating about the steady, low thrum of his voice as it followed the knight up mountains and into deep, dark woods and across a Fódlan that was lost to time and still felt like home. His voice stayed much the same throughout the story, but as the adventure went on, Annette started to realize she could hear a ghost of character voices in his delivery – a slight emphasis in Sir Horatio’s grand declarations, a gravely whine whenever the Bog Witch insulted him, a dragon that dipped Felix’s voice even softer and lower in its menace. Annette didn’t think he was doing it on purpose; it seemed more that he’d heard the story so many times, with _this particularly delivery_ so many times, that he couldn’t separate the intonation from the words, and his own performance necessarily followed.

“How old were you when you read this story?” she asked drowsily, as Felix took a pause for a chapter break and once she was properly assured the dragon wasn’t going to chomp Sir Horatio in half.

Felix looked over in surprise, as if he’d vaguely forgotten where they were and suddenly had to remember how to have a conversation. “I dunno, like four or five?” he guessed.

“You could read a book like this when you were five?” Annette asked, surprised.

“Oh, no,” Felix said. “It was read to me; I think by the time I learned to read I basically had it memorized, anyways.”  
  
Annette picked up on the evasion in the answer, but she wasn’t sure Felix did. He never talked about Glenn, or his mother, or really anyone in his family, to the point that it was an unconscious habit rather than an active decision. She wondered how long until he’d forced his father out of his vocabulary, only speaking around him and never really acknowledging he had ever been there.

“Who . . .” Annette began, but she lost her nerve before the question was even properly formed. Felix looked at her, hesitant. “Who taught you to read?” she asked instead.

Felix’s wince was almost nonexistent; Annette might have missed it if she wasn’t looking right up at him. But she knew, still, that he’d realized what she really wanted to ask about. Annette took a breath to apologize, or to change the subject, but Felix looked away and said evenly, “We had tutors, I guess? Does anyone really remember stuff like that?”

Annette’s father had taught her to read. She didn’t say this.

It was frankly a relief when Felix changed the subject; sometimes deflection was what Annette wanted. He pushed the book over to her and said brusquely, “Your turn to read, I think. I’m not doing the whole thing.”

Annette took the book from him and settled into narrating the witch’s unimpressed reaction to Sir Horatio’s victory over the dragon. She was a more enthusiastic reader than Felix, although she didn’t have the heart to do a properly witchy voice, for fear it might inspire more parallels in Felix’s mind. Even so, Annette quickly fell into the rhythms of the story as she read it, and she felt Felix lean towards her attentively. He seemed almost eager for whatever plot point was going to come next. As Sir Horatio left the bog once more to head somewhere called The Cliffs of Certain Death, Annette was distracted by a soft, muffled tapping beside her. She glanced over as she turned a page and saw that Felix was absently tapping his fingers against the blanket; channeling nervous energy into his fingers now that he wasn’t distracted by reading responsibilities

“Stop that,” she said, grabbing his hand and pulling it over to her. She blushed; not because they were holding hands, but because for a brief moment she kind of did sound like the witch in the story – annoyed and bossy and not particularly impressed. Surprisingly, though, Felix didn’t pull away.

“I wasn’t doing anything,” he mumbled defensively, then looked over at her expectantly, waiting for her to continue reading. She rolled her eyes at him and went back to The Cliffs of Certain Death. They stayed like that, tangled up in the blanket and each other, climbing a set of cliffs that Annette was fairly sure did not actually exist in any Fódlan she was aware of. It was comfortable, and it was familiar, and Annette felt a sense of calm for the first time in what felt like weeks, and certainly for the first time in the last awful twenty-four hours. Felix absently traced his thumb across the back of her hand, and Annette almost expected it, but she felt herself shiver regardless. Perhaps mistaking her shiver for her being cold, Felix gently pulled her closer, moving his arm up from her waist to wrap around her back and more fully bring her against him. Annette stumbled over the next word – embarrassing, because it was “Horatio” and she’d certainly said it more than enough times that evening. She took a breath to steady herself, not sure whether to try the sentence again or tear her eyes away from where she was steadfastly staring at the page and look at Felix to try to figure out if he was also having trouble concentrating on the story at the moment.

From across the room, Gérald Dominic loudly cleared his throat, causing Annette to drop the book with a slight squeak. He stood in the door of the library, looking over at them. Annette guiltily began to break away from Felix, but he steadfastly kept his arm around her, fixing her uncle with a defiant stare. Annette wondered how long her uncle had been standing there – and how long Felix knew he’d been standing there. Felix had always been more observant than she had, something he scolded her about on the battlefield and kitchen duty alike.

“Evening, Gérald,” Felix said, keeping his voice impassive and sliding his hand further down Annette’s back to pull her closer. Annette gave her uncle a bright smile as she snuggled into Felix. “I was just showing Annette one of my favorite books – any interest in reading along?”

“No, no, I was simply stopping in to wish you two goodnight,” her uncle replied brusquely, stepping into the room now that his presence had been acknowledged. He turned a pointed look to Felix. “We’ll be leaving before breakfast tomorrow, so I wanted to turn in early tonight.”

“How interesting,” said Felix. He didn’t sound interested. “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

“Right, then,” her uncle replied. “Goodnight, Annette,” he added, his eyes flicking away from the staring contest with Felix.

Annette smiled again. “Goodnight, Uncle.”

Felix didn't move his arm after Gérald left the room.

Annette made a face that she was fairly sure Felix wouldn’t be able to see. “You’re needling him,” she accused. “I’m not sure what you think that’s going to do.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Felix said. His voice remained uninterested, but he shifted uncomfortably, and Annette was close enough and knew him well enough to know he was deflecting.

“It wouldn’t kill you to be nice to him,” she said, twisting against him so she could look up at him. He frowned at her and looked away.

“He sets my teeth on edge; I don’t know why,” Felix admitted.

Annette reached up and poked Felix on the nose. “You’re just mad that you can’t challenge him to a duel to solve your problems,” she said with a slight smile. She was teasing, but she was probably right. Felix rolled his eyes and grabbed her hand before she could jab him again. He looked back down at her.

“Maybe,” he said softly. “But he’s also the person who could take you away again.” Annette opened her mouth to reply, to assure him that wouldn’t happen, but she lost track of what she wanted to say. Felix broke eye contact as soon as he made it, suddenly finding great interest in the blanket they were sitting on. “That would be extremely annoying,” he added, “after all the work I did to find you in the first place.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Annette finally managed to say.

Felix didn’t reply, but his grip around her tightened for a brief, thrilling moment. Then he sighed, letting go of her hand, which he had previously pinned against his knee. “Unfortunately, right now, neither of us are,” he said, abruptly changing the subject and the subtext. “Two weeks is a long time to stay cooped up in this place.”

Annette made a face. “Welcome to my life, Duke Fraldarius.” She giggled as he made a face back at her; she wondered if she could keep calling him the title once they got back to Garreg Mach; it was delightful how much it annoyed him. She added, quietly but more optimistically, “And if I find that key tomorrow, it might not even be two weeks. Just. Buy me some time at the market. Be real indecisive about what ring to get.”

“Yeah, that won’t be a problem,” Felix muttered grimly. He broke away from Annette fully now, lazily stretching his arms over his head. “I guess it is getting pretty late, if you want to head to bed. Thanks for putting up with the book; I liked some pretty dumb stuff as a kid.”

Annette felt herself pouting – the fire in the fireplace had burned down lower than she’d expected, and the room suddenly felt very cold without Felix next to her. The realization that pouting was an immature reaction to being told it was bedtime did not actually help to brighten her mood. She found a different justification. “We’re in the middle of a section,” she said. “We can’t just leave him dangling off the edge of a cliff like that. I’m not that sleepy, are you?”

Felix gave a short laugh. “You don’t have to get up before dawn tomorrow,” he argued.

“No,” Annette said glumly. “But I wish I did. Convince my uncle to let me come along next time; that would be a better engagement present than a ring.”

“Two weeks,” Felix reminded her as he picked up the book. “Maybe sooner.” Annette thought he was going to stand up and walk away – Felix tended to leave conversations on his terms, not propriety’s terms – but he surprised her by pushing the book back into her hands.

“It’s still your turn to read,” he said, opening the book back up and running his finger down the page to point out the paragraph they’d left off at.

“No, you do it,” Annette said. “I’m too tired to look at words right now.”

Felix’s annoyance was evident. “You literally just said –”

“Shhhhh,” Annette shushed, pushing the book up towards him. “Don’t talk, just read.”

“Those are two contradictory –”

“Shhhhhhhh.”

Annette could imagine the look of pure exasperation on Felix’s face perfectly, but she didn’t bother looking to see it, choosing instead to rearrange herself on the blanket so that she could use Felix as a pillow, her back against his arm and her head resting against his shoulder. And Felix didn’t bother arguing back, choosing instead to pick up the book with one hand and adjust his arm to be around her waist again, letting her lean against his chest instead. If the sigh he gave as he did this was needlessly melodramatic, Annette decided not to mind – he was a much more comfortable pillow this way, so she was willing to permit theatrics.

Annette gave a sigh of her own, small and contented, as she pulled the blanket up around her and shuffled to find the most comfortable position possible. Felix’s voice quickly fell into that comforting, familiar pattern of storytelling as he resumed reading where she had left off. She did her best to focus on the adventures of Sir Horatio – she had a growing suspicion that the bog witch was secretly a beautiful enchantress and she was eager to see if she was right – but she kept getting distracted by the fire. The top log had been placed at an angle, and it had nearly burned away at the middle. It threatened to fall into the grate at any moment, precariously wavering as the fire burned through the center. Felix’s voice was low and deep, the rise and fall of his breathing steady as she leaned against him. The blanket and Felix’s arm and the fire were all so warm, and the flames from the fire weaved in front of her eyes, moving into abstracted orange lines of light as she occasionally tried to blink them back into existence. She wondered if the charred and partial log would cause sparks when it finally fell. She wondered if Sir Horatio also suspected that the bog witch was a beautiful enchantress, and that’s why he was doing so many quests for her. She wondered who exactly had read this book to Felix so many times when he was a child, to make his voice so soothing and rhythmic and steady now, as if he knew every word without actually needing to see it.

She wouldn’t find answers that evening. She was asleep long before the logs in the fire finally folded in on themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoiler warning: the Bog Witch is actually just a Bog Witch; Annette is furious when she finds out.
> 
> Elixirs having ridiculous side effects is one of my favorite Fire Emblem fan fiction tropes. Technically it doesn’t make sense that someone could take an elixir and fight by this logic, but I still find it intrinsically hilarious and you will not take this away from me.
> 
> In other news, there’s fan art to go along with this fic now, which is, you know, completely insane. [ Check it out here. ](https://twitter.com/relic_crusher/status/1230734309431971841) (Spoilers for chapter 4 if you haven’t read chapter 4 and you’re reading chapter . . . 9? What are you doing here.) Also [ check out this extremely good art ](https://twitter.com/relic_crusher/status/1230529255907319809) of Felix and Glenn by the same artist, which isn’t actually from the last chapter but is 100% how I’m picturing them in my head from here on out. 
> 
> I realize we’ve just kind of been adorably spinning our wheels here for a chapter, here. Melodramas can have little a fluff, as a treat. But don’t worry! Next chapter I’ll have Annette push Felix out a window or something. Don’t touch that dial, listeners.


	10. Felix Convinces No One

Felix didn’t like crowds, and he didn’t like talking to people, and he didn’t like making decisions on things he didn’t particularly care about

So he definitely didn’t like marketplaces.

The market was larger than what he was used to in Garreg Mach, but certainly smaller than the many squares he’d visited in Fhirdiad or even within Fraldarius territory. As Felix’s only interactions with Dominic lands had been the eerily quiet estate and the single devastating village he visited, he had thought the marketplace would be similarly abandoned. But there was a surprising bustle of people wandering through the streets and around the brightly colored stalls. Felix wondered if Dominic was at enough of a crossroads to attract a decent number of merchants, or if Gérald had just purposefully chosen a popular day and locale for their trip.

Felix had struck out of luck so far in his search for a ring – or, depending on how you looked at it, he had been remarkably talented at buying Annette time for whatever harebrained scheme she’d come up with this time. The first merchant had elaborately set diamond rings that Felix was pretty sure were ostentatious even by Annette’s standards, and the second merchant had plain bands that were minimalist even by Felix’s standards. He’d taken a moment to stop at a cart selling weapons, just to give his brain a break, but glancing at the merchant’s collection of daggers soon reminded him of the jokes Sylvain would have made at Dimitri’s expense if the three of them were here together. Besides, he was pretty sure it was now his life’s mission to keep Annette away from daggers, as a personal contribution to public good and also for his own safety.

He moved back out into the marketplace. There were too many colors and too many people, and he wasn’t supposed to be looking at swords, and his arm had gone back to always aching slightly again but he didn’t really want to tell Annette that and she was probably going to find out anyways. He scanned the wide cobblestone street, trying to decide which merchant looked the least likely to try to make small talk.

“That’s what you want? Thanks a ton!”

The voice rang through the marketplace and hit Felix with a sensation he hadn’t felt in weeks – _familiarity_. He swiveled towards the sound of the voice until he locked eyes with the merchant in the marketplace most likely to make small talk. She smiled brightly at him, her red hair bobbing around her shoulders as she tilted her head to beckon him closer. He crossed the distance to her booth, hurried and a bit frantic.

“Anna?” he asked in a low whisper, looking desperately around to make sure Gérald or his battalion weren’t within earshot. “What are you _doing_ here?”

Her smile didn’t fade – if anything, seeing him walk over added a certain glint of joy to her eyes. Felix had long learned that this joy came from the prospect of a sale, not any inherent value of the person she was talking to.

“Oh, you know!” she said cheerfully. “Just another day of fantastic deals. It’s what I do best. Are you looking for anything specific, mister?”

“No, but what are you doing _here_?” he asked. “It’s not safe to be in Empire territory, not if word gets out you’ve worked with the Kingdom.”

Her face didn't shift at all; the smile was beginning to unnerve him. “You’re from the Kingdom? Well, that doesn’t matter to me! My deals are the same, no matter what!” she said, far too loudly and far too brightly. “What brings you out this far west? Are you planning to stay in Dominic long-term?”

“Stop joking around, Anna,” Felix said. He was growing impatient as well as concerned. Why was she acting like she didn’t even know him? “You can’t still be mad that I didn’t buy that sword from you two months ago; we both know it wasn’t actually a Zoltan – ” He trailed off, realizing she was blinking at him in a sincere sort of confusion. His mind race through possibilities – dark magic, another undercover mission, the possibility that the last fight really had rearranged his face beyond recognition and he just hadn’t looked in the mirror closely enough – but her eyes suddenly lit up in realization.

“Oh, you must have met my _sister_ ,” she sang out. “There’s a strong family resemblance.” Felix stared at her, trying to spot literally any difference between the two of them, but not-Anna was still talking: “What are you looking for today?”

“Um. Rings,” Felix said. Maybe actual Anna was taller? He was having trouble remembering what she looked like, other than exactly like her sister.

But he was soon forced to return to his original mission, as Anna – was that actually her name? she’d responded to it – pulled out a case of rings from behind her table and set it in front of him. “Ta-daaa! I’ve got some really great stuff here,” she announced. “Since you’re friends with my sister, maybe I can give you a deal. Buy one, get one half-off?”

“No,” Felix said shortly. Remembering that Ashe had always told him to be nice while haggling, he added quickly, “I just need one. It’s for an engagement.”

“Engagements lead to anniversaries, you know. Might wish you had another one this time next year,” she whined at him. His face must have shown that tactic wouldn’t work, because she fell silent and let him look through the rings for a moment.

Like her sister, this merchant seemed to specialize in miscellany, and there wasn’t much guiding principle to what rings she had and how they were organized. Felix blinked at the sparkling rainbow of styles and designs, trying to remember if Annette wore jewelry, or what kind of jewelry she wore, or even what her favorite color was. He was on the verge of asking the merchant for advice, even though he knew full well she’d just coax him into buying the most expensive option, when his eyes suddenly landed on a ring in the bottom corner of the case. It was sandwiched between an elaborately set diamond and a golden band that formed the shape of a heart, and compared to its neighbors it was relatively plain– a silver band with a single stone inlaid at the center. But the light glinting off the gemstone gave Felix the same rush of familiarity that had drawn him to this stall in the first place, and once he spotted it, all the other rings faded into the background.

The stone was a strange shade of blue, not quite green and more muted than you’d expect. He’d only visited the ocean a handful of times, but it reminded him of the waves he’d seen as a child right before the sky had opened up and rain had chased him and Glenn off the beach. Once, a couple years into the war, he had ended up in a tavern with Sylvain and Ingrid and gotten stupidly drunk and tried to explain the color to them in increasingly incoherent desperation. He couldn’t remember how they got on the subject, only that it had been extremely important to him at the time that they understand exactly what this shade was and also that he had been ready to challenge Sylvain to a duel to the death when he realized his friend was barely containing his laughter as he asked follow up questions.

“That’s a good choice.” Anna’s voice violently derailed his thoughts. He didn’t know how she knew which one he was looking at, given that he hadn’t actually picked it up. But she held up exactly the ring he wanted, silver and blue and sparkling in the light. “This her favorite color?”

“Her eyes,” he corrected automatically. “How much is it?”

He managed not to curse when she told him the price. Matthew was going to frown slightly at him when he got back to Fraldarius, which was just about as bad as Annette’s two dozen threats of murderous retaliation from yesterday.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, forgetting all of Ashe’s haggling advice. “Does it . . . does it help that I know your sister?”

She gave him her brightest smile yet. “Nope!”

He bought the ring anyways. It wasn’t until Gérald found him back at the weapons cart several minutes later that he remembered he was supposed to be stalling for time.

***

Felix hid the ring box under his pillow. He wasn’t sure where else to put it before he gave it to Annette. He also wasn’t entirely sure when he was supposed to do that – he’d already proposed, which seemed like the actual right timing, but it also seemed very strange to just casually hand it to her over dinner.

He’d been tempted to give it to her as soon as they’d arrived back at the Dominic estate that afternoon. She’d run across an upstairs hallway leading above the main hall and hurried down the stairs to greet them, slightly out of breath as she met them in the main entryway.

“You’re back so soon!” she said, her voice a little too loud in what Felix guessed was an attempt at sounding cheerful. “I guess your diplomatic talks didn’t take as long as you thought they would?”

“Guess not,” Felix said, dropping the ring box back into his pocket as she looked up at him with a smile that he didn’t believe for a second. “Did you have much luck with, um, wedding plans?”

“Oh, you know!” she said, the cheerfulness in her voice a knife’s edge. “There’s just never enough time to do all the things you want to do! And most of what I tried I made little progress in.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Annette,” Gérald said solemnly. He wrapped a fatherly arm around her shoulder and began to lead her out of the main hall. “I’d thought we could finalize the seating plans this afternoon if you wouldn’t mind consulting; I can never remember which of your aunts fights with which. I’m sure Duke Fraldarius wants to get some training in, but you’ll see each other at dinner.”

“I’m sure that’s fine, uncle,” Annette said sweetly. She swiveled around to Felix and mouthed “ _no training”_ , or perhaps “ _no key-ring”_ ; Felix didn’t quite catch it. She didn’t repeat herself, fading back into that cheerful smile. “I’ll see you tonight, Felix!” she called out.

Felix decided that giving her a ring was a problem for Future Felix to figure out. He decided a lot of things were for Future Felix to figure out.

Dinner was uneventful, but Gérald was evidently quite picky about seating charts (for reasons Felix could not fathom), so Felix was left to his own devices for the evening, as both his host and his fiancée were unavailable. He wrote a letter to Matthew responding to some minor concerns in the territories, wrote a brief, unaddressed letter to Sylvain that he would have to figure out how to send at some point in the near future, and polished two of the swords he’d brought with him. He tried reading his childhood tale about Sir Horatio, but he found it was hard to concentrate without thinking about Annette falling asleep against him before they’d even reached the Desolate Wasteland of No Return – his personal favorite part. He’d waited for her to wake up on her own, reading silently to himself when he realized she was no longer listening and then not reading at all, but simply staring at the dying fire, and then, when the fire was gone, simply staring at Annette. Once he realized that wasn’t really going to wake her up, he’d carried her back to her bedroom, ignoring the caustic glare from the servant positioned outside her bedroom door as usual. Carrying Annette was an easy enough feat, but the sheer size of the ridiculously fluffy blanket she’d found, that he’d kept wrapped around her, did make him trip on his own two feet more than once as he tried to walk as quietly as possible. Still, it had been worth it to see the way she snuggled into the blanket when he finally got her back to her bed; her red hair barely peeking out as she nestled into her pillow. She looked ridiculous. She looked adorable. The caustically-glaring servant leaned against the doorway, caustically, and glared until he finally shuffled out of the room.

All of this to say that he gave up on the Desolate Wasteland of No Return pretty quickly that evening.

When Felix finally fell asleep on his own bed that night, he dreamed he was getting swallowed up by that blanket, and that the ring box was somewhere hiding amongst the folds and the fluff, but every time he tried to get to the bottom of it the blanket grew larger, and Annette wasn’t there but Anna was, and she tried to sell him something to make the blanket smaller because if he couldn’t find the ring then he couldn't marry Annette.

It was frankly a relief when the repeated, insistent knocking woke him up from the dream.

He had no idea what time it was as he blinked groggily in the darkness. The moonbeams through his curtains were bright enough that it couldn’t possibly be near dawn. He snapped his fingers a few times until a faint flame appeared between his fingers – Byleth had always said he should study Reason; he hated when she was right – and made his way to the door. The knocking was too soft for the castle to be on fire, so he hoped whatever it was, it was something that would let him get back to bed soon.

He opened to door to Annette at mid-knock. She glared up at him with a look of determination that was honestly terrifying. She pushed him back into the room before he could say anything and closed the door behind her silently.

“Why do you even have this many swords?” was the first thing she asked him, which didn’t seem relevant this far after midnight.

“How can you even see them?” Felix hissed back. The flame between his fingers had died out, and Annette’s own palm barely emitted a magical glow. They were mostly lit by moonlight, and even that was partially blocked from curtains.

“I can sense mess,” she said matter-of-factly, and for a moment, Felix almost believed her. “Look at you, your bed’s not even made!”

“That’s because it’s like three o’clock in the morning and I was, you’re not going to believe this, _asleep_ ,” Felix said. Annette more or less ignored this, as she pushed the covers back into place at the top of the bed and took a seat. Her legs swung over the edge of the bed, not touching the ground. Felix slightly bumped into his end table as he leaned against the wall, and hoped his scowl was fierce enough to make up for the various vectors of embarrassment coursing through his bloodstream at the moment. “Did you find the key?” he asked, his voice a whisper despite the fact that they were alone.

Annette frowned. “No, I didn’t find the key. It took me forever to find an opening to get into my uncle’s bedroom in the first place, and it wasn’t anywhere in there. I looked through every pair of socks, too.” She turned the frown towards Felix. “And then I couldn’t search his study, because _someone_ came back directly after lunch and I ran out of time.”

Felix shrugged, but doubted she could see it in the dark. “Next time give me a more interesting diversion than buying a stupid ring,” he said, annoyed at the implication that this was somehow his fault. “They all looked the same; how was I supposed to pretend to care which one I got.”

Annette probably rolled her eyes, but again, the darkness made it hard to tell. “Please take Ingrid with you when you actually propose to some poor woman,” she said. “Or me. Even Sylvain. I ask this for her sake, as well as behalf of all women everywhere.”

“This is a riveting conversation, Annette, but to be honest, being asleep was really great,” Felix said. “Could we discuss my general lack of marital suitability in the morning, or is there some other reason you’re here?”

“Oh, yes, sorry!” Annette said. She was kicking her feet back and forth slightly, which was distracting. “You’re going to help me break into my uncle’s study. Let’s go.”

Grabbing and lighting a candle from the nightstand next to him, she was quickly off the bed and halfway out the door. Felix wanted to point out that it was three in the morning, but realized that was likely part of her plan. He also wanted to point out that he was wearing a night shirt and didn’t have shoes, but the determination in Annette’s eyes told him she probably found that irrelevant. He finally settled on, “I don’t see why you need me to come along,” as he followed her out into the hall.

“I need you to hold the candle while I pick the lock,” Annette explained.

“You know like two dozen different fire spells,” Felix reminded her. “You don’t need a human candelabra.”

“Okay, then, I need you to punch the guards if we get caught.”

“I’m not doing that. That will make things worse.”

“Well, you’re already here,” Annette said. She looked up at him, her face barely visible by the candlelight. She had the audacity to smile. “Maybe it’ll be fun!”

Felix very much doubted this, but she’d already started walking away. Shaking his head to clear the last vestiges of sleep from his brain, he followed after the candlelight, which was catching the ends of Annette’s hair like a faint halo.

***

Felix tapped his foot as he acted as lookout, not entirely sure what he was supposed to do if he saw someone coming down the hall, as there weren’t exactly a lot of hiding spots available in a long, straight hallway, unless he and Annette wanted to stand very still and hope someone thought they were a painting of her third cousins twice removed or something.

“I thought you said Ashe taught you how to do this,” he said impatiently.

“I _said_ I was really bad at it,” she snapped back. “Learning how to do something and actually being able to do it are not the same thing.”

“Do you want me to just kick the door down?” he offered again. “I never learned how to do it, but evidently there’s no connection.”

“Hush, I think I’ve almost got it,” Annette chided, and to Felix’s surprise, she was right. With a soft _click_ , Annette open pushed the door to Gérald’s study, sticking her hairpin back into her curls as she walked in.

The study was large and well organized, with a central desk and two chairs against a window at the back, several bookshelves lining the walls, and an impressive cabinet for files and paperwork. Felix had been in the room several times before, most notably when he first arrived at Dominic and spent several afternoons making arrangements for a marriage to Annette that he wasn’t entirely sure he understood in retrospect. But he was overwhelmed by the size of the room when he considered it as a hiding place for an object as small as a key. He wasn’t even sure where to start looking, and he blinked rather dumbly in the candlelight. Annette, however, seemed to understand the layout of the study instinctively, and she immediately made a beeline for the cabinet of papers.

“Check the desk,” she whispered to him. Felix set the candle in a holder on the desk and began to systematically look through the many side drawers. In the first drawer he found a fair number of writing supplies and a pretty interesting letter opener that was shaped like a small sword, but the rest of the drawers seemed to be mainly paperwork, and boring paperwork, at that. He wondered briefly if there was anything worth stealing for the Blue Lions information network, but much of the ledgers and letters he uncovered seemed to relate to Dominic as an estate, rather than to the Dukedom as a whole. He paused over a recent ledger, flipping through it with sudden curiosity. The war had hit Dominic hard, economically – the numbers were bad from the beginning of the year, but steadily got worse as the months went on. Siding with the Empire and the Dukedom may have kept Dominic alive for now, but it didn’t seem to have any financial kickbacks.

Annette gave a sharp intake of breath, and for a moment Felix wondered if she was going to accuse him of snooping – a ridiculous concern, given the situation. But when he looked up, hastily shoving the ledger back into the drawer, Annette was clutching a stack of papers from a bottom drawer of the cabinet, kneeling on the floor as she spread them out in front of her.

“What?” Felix asked, bringing the candle over and crouching on the ground next to her. “Something about the Empire?”

“No, it’s not that,” Annette breathed, holding up a sheet of paper and squinting at it. Felix brought the candle as close as he dared to the paper; he knew Annette and fire could be a dangerous combination. The candlelight threw her face half in light and half in shadow, making her frown seem ominous instead of merely puzzled, and he wasn’t sure which was the correct interpretation.

“It’s my mother’s handwriting,” she explained as she picked up another piece of paper. “Letters, to my uncle. But look at the date.” She pointed to the top corner. “It’s from right before we came here, after, um – right after Duscur.”

Felix knew why she stumbled at the end. Everyone stumbled when they brought up Duscur around him. He redirected. “Your father disappeared after that, right?” he asked, even though he knew the answer.

Annette nodded, swallowing hard. “Mother never really talked about what was going on, you know,” she said. And now she was talking around the issue, and Felix understood her perfectly. “She just told me stories of how happy we’d be when he came back, which would be soon. Like I was an _idiot._ ”

Felix absently straightened one of the letters on the ground so it more clearly faced Annette. “She should have had more faith in you,” he said, mostly to have something to say, but also because it was true.

Annette shook her head. “No, that’s the worst part,” she said. “She was right. Not about him, about me. I believed every word.”

She stared at the letters for a long, hard moment. Then she shuffled them back together and picked them up desperately. “Hold onto these for me,” she said, shoving them at Felix. “He won’t notice they’re gone, this is a bottom drawer.” Felix took them from her and stuck them in his back pocket. They stuck out awkwardly and he wished again that Annette had given him time to change into actual clothes.

“There’s nothing in the desk,” Felix said with a slight gesture towards it. “Here, let me take over going through these files; you try the bookshelves.” He was a bit overwhelmed by the knickknacks and heirlooms that were piled in front of the books on almost every shelf, and wondered if Annette would have better luck navigating it. She moved past him wordlessly, and he set to methodically going through each cabinet drawer. He had little luck – the files in the desk had been boring, but at least recent enough to be relevant. These had no such redemption. He suspected Gérald Dominic hadn’t thrown away a single piece of correspondence in the last decade.

He was interrupted from his search by another exclamation from Annette; this one far more triumphant. He turned to see her holding a ring of keys aloft, as if it was some relic from the goddess herself. She absolutely beamed at him.

“Hidden in this ugly vase,” she said eagerly, jingling the keys at him slightly and then immediately stopping when the clatter echoed through the office. “I knew the pattern was too awful for him to just keep it around for fun,” she added.

Felix walked over to her. “You think those are right ones?” he asked.

“Has to be, right?” Annette asked. “Look at this one, it’s ominous looking.” She held up a large metal key from the ring that did indeed look like it had to go with something sinister, like a prison cell, although Felix wasn’t sure locksmiths designed their keys based on aesthetics. “But you’re right, maybe we should figure out a way to get down to the dungeon and test it out before we make the final escape plan.”

“Any ideas on how to pull that off?” Felix asked. Half of him was genuinely curious – he certainly didn’t have any ideas yet – and half of him just liked hearing Annette’s schemes, which were usually accompanied by dramatic hand gestures and even more dramatic plot twists.

She didn’t disappoint this time. “So what I’m thinking is _I_ go down there and distract the guards,” she said, flinging her hands to the side in a double-fingered point. The keys rattled against each other. “They love me down there; we hung out all the time before you got here and I only threatened them with a sword once. And then, while I’m distracting them, you use your swordmaster-assassin moves to _sneak past_ them –” At this, Annette thrust her arms in the opposite direction to accentuate, Felix guessed, sneaking past people.

It was then that she knocked the aforementioned vase off the shelf, sending it to the ground with an echoing crash.

And then she dropped the keys on top of the shattered vase. They clanged against each other merrily.

And then, in her belated attempt to flail towards the vase and catch it, she knocked into a set of glass and metal baubles on the above shelf, which seemed to fall into each other in slow motion as they one-by-one crashed into the ground.

Felix grabbed Annette pulled her away from the bookshelf before she could do any more damage. The stayed frozen like that, Annette burying herself against Felix as if physical distance from the shelf could stop the cacophony she’d just caused. They didn’t speak, they didn’t breathe, they didn’t look at each other – any of the above seemed like something that could jinx the eerie stillness that followed the crash. After a moment of terrifying, tense stillness, Felix let out a breath, sending a rare prayer of thanks to the goddess that no one was around to hear them.

As if in direct, ironic response to the prayer, it was then that they heard the footsteps running down the hallway towards the study.

Annette was out of Felix’s arms and at the door with an agility that would have been extremely useful five minutes ago. As she locked the door, Felix sprinted to the back of the room, grabbing one of the chairs from the desk and lugging it over to the door. They could hear the voices on the other side of the door as Felix helped Annette jam the chair under the handle.

“It’s locked, do you have the key? You heard that, right?”

“Go get Baron Dominic; I’ll wait here. Hurry!”

The chair would buy them some time, at least.

Felix turned to Annette. For a frantic, wild moment, he wondered if there were secret passages leading out of the study, somehow. Before he had a chance to thoroughly embarrass himself by asking her, she reached up and slammed her hand against his mouth, jostling him roughly up against one of the bookshelves.

“Don’t talk,” she whispered fiercely. “They can’t know you’re here.”

Felix found the claim ridiculous coming from Annette – her whisper could be as loud as his speaking voice, and he wasn’t the one who knocked over half the shelves in the study. But he nodded and she let go of him. Felix tried to give her his best “what do we do _now_ ” scowl, but he worried that it looked much the same as his other scowls.

“The window,” Annette said suddenly, swiveling towards the back of the study. She pulled Felix after her as she hurried towards it, throwing open the curtains. Moonlight pooled around the two of them. She looked up at him. “We’re three stories up. How are you at climbing?”

Felix took stock for a moment. His leg had given out a couple of times that day, once as he dismounted from his horse at the marketplace and once on a remarkably ordinary flight of stairs. He’d caught himself both times, but there was a slight twinge through his shin whenever he did anything more strenuous than slowly walking. He sword arm also continued to ache; he worried that if he put more weight on it than was necessary he might reverse the last bits of Annette’s earlier white magic. And Annette was going to need help climbing if they were going to both get down alive. He realized the best strategy – the only viable strategy, really – would be to balance her with his right arm when needed and just muscle through the weight-bearing pain of clinging to a rough castle wall with his left.

He gave her a thumbs up.

Annette pulled open the window, stepping back with the glass into the study. The air was warmer tonight; spring came late to Faerghus but it was finally beginning to appear on the horizon. The air was still; even the owls had returned home for the night at this point, and it was still too early in the year for crickets. They couldn’t take the candle with them, but Felix was hopeful the moon would provide enough light to see by – it was practically full this evening.

Felix carefully swung his legs around the windowsill and took stock of the castle wall. He doubted it would be possible to climb up, but there were enough jutting, uneven stones and vaguely stable looking ivy branches that it was most likely possible to get to the ground. Holding onto the windowsill, he found footing against a break in the castle wall, and settled into it. He looked down and found a reasonable foothold for his next step, then pulled himself up to rest his elbows on the windowsill. Annette looked down at him, calmer than he thought she would be considering how bad this plan was.

“I think I’ve found a foothold, but you’re going to have to hang on,” he whispered, reaching out his hand. “This’ll work better if I have both my hands, so just try not to pull my hair or anything, okay?”

The door rattled behind them violently. Felix was pretty sure he could hear Gérald’s voice, angry and questioning, on the other side of the door. Annette looked back into the study.

Felix grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the window. “I’ll keep you safe, I promise, but we’ve got to go,” he said. “That chair won’t last forever.”

Annette looked down at him again and for the first time he realized what the calm in her eyes was. Resignation. And now, for a brief moment, pity.

“They know it’s me,” she said quietly. “Of course they know it’s me. Who else would it be.”

Felix tugged on her arm. Most of his weight was balanced on his bad leg; he needed to start moving, and soon. “All the more reason to hurry,” he hissed. “We can outrun them, if they’re distracted. We can get to Gilbert and get _out_ of here.”

“And if it’s the wrong key?” she asked. She tried to pull away from him, but at this point Felix needed her for balance as much as anything else. He leaned towards her, leveraging himself on the window more. “If we get intercepted? If they see _you_? They know I’m trouble; I can buy you time.”

“Annette, I –” Felix started. He tried to pull her closer, and a bolt of pain shot through to his elbow. He winced. What had happened the last time Annette was caught trying to break Gilbert out? Gérald seemed reasonably convinced she was in favor of the marriage; how would he react to finding her trying to run away again? Felix ignored the pain and clasped his fingered around Annette’s wrist.

“I can’t just leave you,” he said desperately. The door banged loudly behind him.

Annette grabbed the hand on her wrist with her other hand. She leaned out the open window, towards Felix.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she whispered against his ear. “And don’t worry about me.”

Closing her eyes tightly, she pressed her lips against his. She leaned a little too far into the kiss, and her hair fell forward against Felix’s neck, and he was surrounded by her hair and her touch and her outright, tireless _concern_ for him. Felix dropped her wrist and reached for her blindly, momentarily unthinking about the obvious danger approaching from literally every direction at the moment.

Annette pulled away and slammed the window closed against him. The final look she gave him as she pulled the curtains together was so worried he thought it might actually kill him.

Felix wanted to pound on the window until she came back. He wanted to open the window and pull her back after him. He wanted, at the very least, to be able to see her. He wanted to do basically anything other than imagine guards rushing in and grabbing her and dragging her away, like they’d done when she’d first come to Dominic, before he had known she was in danger, before he could save her. He was supposed to save her now, and all he had to show for it was a back pocket full of letters and a kiss that didn’t mean anything and a leg that barely worked.

It was then that his leg more or less stopped working.

Felix plunged downward, his fingers gripping the edge of the windowsill at the last moment, and his other leg swinging through the air until it finally, blessedly found the footing he’d spotted before. He scrambled with one hand to find a better handhold than the edge of the window, and ended up grasping at the original foothold, forcing his bruised and aching leg to dip lower and find another temporary resting place. From there, gravity did most of the work, with some help from desperation, as Felix clung to any stone, branch, or miniscule crevice as he scrambled down the wall of the castle. At one point the ivy he grabbed onto gave away in his hands and he momentarily wondered if he would outright die from the fall or just break his remaining limbs for a complete set, but after plunging a few feet the ivy branch pulled taut as he clung to it, and he was able to reposition his feet and regain control of his descent. He gave up in the last few feet, dropping to the ground in a panting, desperate crouch, the soles of his feet bloodied and cut from the stone and his hair hanging around his face in an unruly, tangled mess.

After a few ragged, uneven breaths, Felix pulled himself to his feet, leaning against the castle wall for balance. He looked up and made direct eye contact with a castle guard, who was standing a few feet away, looking at him curiously.

Felix leaned his head against the wall and groaned to himself. The guard was armed and he was not, but he knew how to punch and he knew how to disarm and he had a lot more riding on the line right now, and so he still didn’t really consider it a fair fight. “I really don’t want to kill you,” he muttered, almost under his breath.

The guard tilted his head to the side. His sword remained sheathed at his side. “That’s good, I suppose,” he said. “I really don’t want to die.”

Felix looked at him in surprise. The guard looked back, less surprised but equally curious.

“Are you the fiancé?” he asked finally. Felix nodded; he couldn’t imagine any other fiancés of note around the estate right now. The guard looked him up and down, then added. “What’s she see in you?”

Felix wondered if the guard was lying about not wanting to die. “No idea,” he said flatly.

The guard glanced up at the window. “The Baron’s study is up there, isn’t it?” he said. He looked over at Felix. “Kind of a weird place for a tryst, don’t you think?”

“Shut up,” snapped Felix, unable to help himself. “She’s not – you can’t – it wasn’t like that. It’s none of your business.”

The guard raised his eyebrows, slightly. “I mean, my job is to keep an eye on the castle grounds. And you come tumbling out of the master of the house’s study at five in the morning. That actually sounds like it’s very much my business.”

Felix’s hand automatically went to his side, but no sword was there. He took a step back from the guard, sizing up his options. He didn’t get very far before the guard suddenly broke his gaze, looking back up at the study.

“Get back,” he snapped, his lackadaisical drawl shortening into something tense and directive. He hastily rushed towards Felix, but his sword remained undrawn – instead, he shoved Felix backwards into the large rhododendron bush growing up against the castle wall. Felix collapsed into the thorns with a sharp gasp, but as confused as he was, he was lucid enough to realize that pushing someone into a rhododendron bush was not actually a viable battle strategy. He peered at the guard but didn’t move – he could counter if necessary, but this didn't feel like an attack.

It wasn’t. The window of the study swung open, and Felix realized the guard must have spotted the curtains moving. Ignoring the thorns digging into his back and legs, Felix pushed himself back into the bushes, scarcely breathing. He could vaguely see the window – and the smoke pouring out of it.

“Annette,” he whispered to himself. “What did you _do_.”

The guard had similar questions. “Everything okay up there?” he shouted to Gérald, who was leaning out the window and coughing. In the background, Felix could hear vague sounds of fighting, and screaming. Mostly, it seemed, Annette screaming. Mostly, it seemed, about how she would cast magic again, and they shouldn’t come near her.

Gérald ignored this. “It’s fine, just a minor accident,” he called down. “All quiet tonight?” Felix froze in the bushes. He held his breath and waited for the guard to answer.

“Yes sir. On my way to bed from the night shift in the dungeons.”

“Ah, very quiet then. Sleep well, then.” And Gérald disappeared back into the study, leaving the window open as smoke trailed out into the fringes of dawn.

The guard leaned against the wall that had been Felix’s refuge. Felix didn’t dare move from his spot in the bushes, for fear that someone else would deem the fresh air outside the window a necessary contrast to the smoke-filled room. They both waited, silently, as the sounds of scuffling chaos poured out of the window. Felix heard Annette’s screams for someone to _let go of me_ and _put me down_. He heard Gérald’s disappointed, cut off interjections of _for the goddess’s sake, Annette_ , which were interrupted by more frantic cries and frenzied crashes. And then, the cries got fainter, and the crashes stopped, and Felix heard nothing at all from the study, which was worse.

A hand reached into the bushes and Felix took it without thinking. The guard pulled him up.

“She threatened me with a sword a few weeks ago, you know,” the guard said, as if they’d never stopped their initial conversation. “But fire does seem to be her preferred method of attack.” He seemed much less concerned about the proceedings than Felix, who felt his stomach twist as he looked back up towards the window.

“Wind, actually,” Felix murmured to himself. The curtains wafted lazily in the morning air; the smoke was finally beginning to dissipate.

“I’m sorry?”

“You covered for me,” Felix said instead of repeating himself. “Why?”

The guard frowned as he looked at Felix. “Abel tells me you jumped in front of an axe for him. Didn’t even hesitate. That true?”

Felix couldn’t entirely remember how the battle had ended; he’d acted mostly on adrenaline and could barely scrape together the twelve hours after that. “He was in the way,” he said; he could remember that much. “Not sure what else I was supposed to do. He a friend of yours?”

“He means a lot to me,” the guard said. “And he thinks a lot of you, now.” He narrowed his eyes at Felix, more in concentration than in suspicion. “I haven’t met a lot of nobles that would do that, you know,” he added.

“Don’t make this sentimental; he was in the way, I pushed him out of the way.” Felix didn’t know why he was getting so defensive, given that his snap decision to save Abel actually seemed to be working in his favor right now. Unless it wasn’t. “If you’re hoping for blackmail, you’ve gravely miscalculated,” he snapped. “If you tell them you saw me tonight, it’s my word against yours. Maybe they’ll believe you, but probably they won’t. And if they don’t, you’re in a lot more trouble than if you just kept your mouth shut.”

The guard was unfazed by the implied threat. “I guess it wasn’t a tryst, then?” he said. “Kind of an overreaction from her uncle if it was, given that you weren’t actually there. Was it about those?” he pointed to Felix’s hip, and Felix for a moment thought he was referring to some phantom sword before he realized the guard was pointing to the letters, still somehow miraculously sticking out of his back pocket.

Felix pulled out the letters and stared at them dumbly. “They’re letters,” he explained, which was obvious. “From her mother,” he added, which was not.

The guard reached towards them and Felix snatched them back, suddenly protective. Felix could’ve sworn the guard smiled at this. “Is the mother any better than her father?” he asked.

“I haven’t met her,” Felix said. “But Annette wanted these.”

“An odd decision, to sneak around in the middle of the night just to get your hands on a couple of letters,” the guard said slowly.

Felix glared. “She’s an odd girl,” he said. It wasn’t quite a lie.

“And you, climbing out a window like that, just to avoid getting caught with a couple pieces of paper,” the guard added. “Also odd. But I guess, maybe, it actually isn’t any of my business.”

Felix tilted his head and stared at the guard. It was infuriating how hard it was to get a read on him. “You didn’t think that a few minutes ago. Any reason you changed your mind?” he finally asked.

The silence that hung between them was so tense that Felix almost forgot to breathe. Somewhere in the distance, he realized a bird, somewhere, had begun to sing.

When the guard finally spoke, Felix got the sense that this was the end of the conversation.

“Here’s what I figure,” he said. “Suppose I tell our Lord Baron I saw you tonight, and he believes me. If you get house-arrested and sent off to Fhirdiad or whatever, no one marries the lady of the manor. And there’s no way we find another Empire noblemen crazy enough to marry her; she’s going to set your bed on fire within the first week, you know that, right?” He tilted his head back and looked up at the window again. “The sooner you two head off on your honeymoon, the sooner I can go back to napping on night watch. I had a pretty good gig before she showed up.”

“That’s . . . an incredibly stupid reason to betray your home,” Felix said. “But it’s one that works in my favor.” He reached out his hand to agree on the deal. The guard didn’t take it.

“Yeah, well, my home has never been a Dukedom. My _home_ wouldn’t bend its knee to the Empire,” he said, and his voice had a jagged edge to it that Felix hadn’t heard until now. “Not really sure what betrayal looks like, these days.” He looked Felix in the eye and his gaze was both desperate and resolute. “You saved Abel, and you’ll get her out of here. I guess that’s two things I can be loyal to.” He gave Felix a final, parting frown. “Maybe help her climb out the window with you next time. I don’t like hearing her scream like that.”

As the guard walked away Felix still wasn’t sure if he’d made an ally or an enemy. He also wasn’t sure where Annette was or if she was okay. And he certainly wasn’t sure how to get back to his bedroom without leaving a trail of bloody footprints straight to his door.

And now, he realized, none of these were problems he could put off for his future self.

The morning cries of the birds were overwhelming now. He didn’t know how he’d missed it, before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If slapstick levels of clumsiness as a dramatic plot point is good enough for Bong Joon-ho, it’s good enough for me, and that’s all I have to say about that.
> 
> I was in a D+D group and we were all a bunch of delightful disasters, and about 15 minutes after meeting literally any NPC we'd be like "hey wait, what was that guy's name again?" and the DM would just glare at us and say through gritted teeth, "you don't know because _nobody asked him_ " and we never learned our lesson so no one knew anyone's name. Anyways that's me and this guard; I'm sure he has a name but hell if I know what it is!
> 
> I think the next chapter is roughly the halfway point! I will think of something exciting to do, don't worry. Have a good rest of your week until then! I love you; make good choices; etc etc.


	11. Annette Misses Her Mother

Annette Dominic had been alone for most of here life, really.

She’d had her mother, growing up, of course. For the most part, she’d even had her father growing up – he traveled, but not so much that she didn’t see him, and love him, and know that he loved her. But she was, in retrospect, quite a lonely child. She didn’t have siblings, and her handful of extended cousins lived far enough away that she saw them rarely. She had few playmates, and most were temporary – visitors to her family’s home for a few weeks at a time, at most. She’d listened to Felix’s exasperated stories about Sylvain and Ingrid with a kind of uncomprehending envy – her entire life, her friendships had been carefully cultivated or desperately forged, and a tiny part of her was sure that they could be severed at any moment. Felix’s easy anger towards his childhood friends baffled her because it never seemed to mean anything; they had known each other too long, and too well, for anger to matter. She had nothing like that.

It had been worse once her father left, of course. Her childhood had been isolated, but it had been sunny and familiar and full of laughter and music and all the joy she still carried tightly in her heart. The Dominic Estate was unfamiliar; her uncle was a mystery; her mother became a shadow. Annette carved a space for herself in places where she could get lost – the garden maze; the library bookshelves; her own desperate, ambitious plans for sorcery. If her childhood made isolation into a song; the move to the heart of Dominic turned loneliness into an endless exploration. There was too much world out there for her to feel alone in it.

Things had changed at the School of Sorcery, of course. Meeting Mercedes had felt like finding air and drinking water and feeling sunshine all at once; a solution to a problem she didn’t know she had. And then she and Mercie were both accepted into the officer’s academy – it was strange to think of it in retrospect, but that year at Garreg Mach, that spiraled so horribly and ended in disaster, was possibly the happiest year of her life. For once, she had known what it meant to belong to a community. She had one year out of sixteen, and then, five years later, two years of twenty-one. It was a ratio she accepted, gladly, in exchange for Mercie’s laughter, and Dedue’s patience, and Felix’s rare, fascinating smile. Up until the last few weeks, she had no quarrel with the hand life had dealt her, and considered herself unbelievably lucky for the steady, loyal, irreplaceable friends she had made in the Kingdom’s army. But none of this changed that Annette Dominic had spent most of her life more or less alone.

She should have been prepared, then, when he uncle gave her a final, angry, pitying look and slammed the door of her bedroom against her. She shouldn’t have minded when she heard the lock, and the second lock, and the fading footsteps.

She wasn’t prepared. She did mind.

When she’d first arrived in Dominic (to use the polite, genteel phrasing she was sure her uncle would prefer), she’d generally had free reign of the estate. People were keeping an eye on her, but surveillance was manageable. A week and three solo escape attempts into her captivity, she tried to break her father out of the dungeon. That was the first time her uncle realized that maybe captivity needed to mean something for Annette. After a week of locking her in her room with little contact besides servants who brought her meals, Gérald seemed to figure she’d learned her lesson. He took the spell books from the libraries and the decorative swords off the walls, but he let her back outside. Perhaps this was because rumors that the Baron’s daughter was suffering from an extended nervous breakdown could only be sustained for so long before someone started to wonder why he needed guards in front of the door for an invalid. More likely, Baron Dominic just knew his niece.

He was right, in a way. Not that Annette was going to give up on her plans to escape, but that she knew she had to be more cautious and exact in her ideas. But a week’s enforced isolation was still the deeply unpleasant ordeal Gérald expected it to be. Left with nothing but her own thoughts and a desperate nervous energy, Annette was shocked at how quickly she become untethered from reality. The shadows at night seemed to take on human shape if she left her curtains open enough for moonlight, but if she closed the curtains, her mind conjured far worse figures in the darkness. She found herself talking back, out loud, in a nonexistent conversation with Mercie or, worse, her father or, worst, Dimitri. At first, these conversations were explaining why things would be okay. When they turned into asking for forgiveness, she started writing letters. She couldn’t send them, but at least she could control them.

Annette knew it would be worse to be in the dungeons, or tortured for information, or sent to Fhridiad for execution. She knew that somewhere in his mind, her uncle was protecting her. That didn’t make the week easier. She wondered, when they slammed the door shut on her at five o’clock in the morning two weeks before her wedding day, if two weeks would be easier than one, now that she’d had practice at it.

Things were actually far worse, far faster.

The first day she mostly spent going over her mistakes. The good news was she managed to gloss over most of her mistakes and failings in a larger context and just skip to the previous evening. The bad news was there were an awful lot of mistakes to tally up from the previous evening. Her main goal, once everything went haywire and she was left alone in the study and then distinctly Not Alone in the study, was to buy Felix as much time to get away as possible. Her knack for chaos had come in handy, for once, and she’d managed to keep four guards and an outraged uncle on their toes and towards the front of the study as she used magical pyrotechnics to misdirect them away from the window. This plan worked until it didn’t, as enough smoke filled the room that her uncle stumbled blindly to throw open the window. She imagined that the lack of a bruised and broken body meant that Felix hadn’t actually plummeted three stories while trying to climb down and escape. But she wasn’t entirely clear on what conversation her uncle was having while he leaned out the window – or who he could have possibly been having it with – because at that particular moment she had turned and ineffectively punched a guard in the nose, and the ensuing chaos from that terrible decision distracted her even more.

Carefully, she listed each mistake, trying to think of a way she could have been better, could have been stronger, could have been enough. The list got longer each time she went through it.

Mistake 1: Keep your hands to yourself when you stand near fragile vases. Mistake 2: Keep your hands to yourself when you push your fiancé out the window to his only escape route. Mistake 3: Don’t mentally call him your fiancé when he isn’t; pretending something doesn’t make it real. Mistake 4: Find a better way to shock your fiancé into letting go of you than by kissing him, so that he doesn’t look at you like _that_ when you close the curtains on him. Mistake 5: Find a way to keep the guards away from the window that doesn’t inadvertently cause the guards to need to open the window. Mistake 6: Keep your thumb outside to the side of your fist when you throw a punch. Mistake 7: Did you seriously go back to calling him yours _one step_ after I told you not to? That’s really pathetic.

The second day was more focused: she thought about Felix. She thought about the ways he could have escaped and the horrific possibility that he hadn’t actually escaped. She thought about every single way she’d managed to fail him, last night and last week and from the moment she decided to travel to Dominic. She thought about how much happier he would be if he was back in Garreg Mach, and how his entire life was defending the people that mattered to him, and how he couldn’t do that because of her. She mostly thought about his face – the final look of confusion and betrayal he gave her before she slammed the curtains closed, the final reminder that she had failed and he was the one paying for it.

She did not think about the kiss. She did not think about the kiss. She did not think about the kiss.

When she heard his voice shouting outside her bedroom door, she thought about what he must look like, standing on the other side. If he had even bothered to heal the injuries he undoubtedly garnered from that climb. If he’d been stupid enough to bring a sword. If he was radiating pure anger or if anyone else would be able to see the worry on his face the way she could hear it in the edges of his words:

“Let me _by_ , I need to _talk_ to her. Why is this door _locked_?”

“She’s not seeing anyone right now, your grace. She’s feeling unwell.”

“What do you mean she’s feeling unwell? Why wasn’t she at dinner last night? What’s wrong with her?”

“You can’t see her right now. That’s what she says.”

“I’m her _fiancé_. Let me talk to her.”

“I’m sorry, your grace.”

There wasn’t much point in pounding on the door and yelling out that she wasn’t actually sick – Felix already knew that, and Annette was pretty sure the only thing standing between her and a dungeon cell was her uncle’s desperation to keep her most recent escape attempts from her betrothed’s naïve, innocent ears. So instead, Annette slumped against the door and listened to them argue, wrapped up in the ridiculously fluffy library blanket, which she’d kept on her bed. The blanket still faintly smelled like him, all cinnamon and sandalwood. She could vaguely remember him wrapping the blanket closer around her as she drifted in and out of sleep in a much more comforted, safe restlessness. Clutching the blanket around herself now, Annette leaned her head against the door and closed her eyes and listened, and when Felix was gone she didn’t move, and when she opened her eyes again the afternoon had slipped by and the sun was setting and she could almost imagine it was because he had tucked the blanket around her again and told her it was okay to drift away. She slept terribly that night, seeing a different kind of disappointment in his final parting look every time she closed her eyes.

The third day she didn’t think about much at all. She’d run out of thoughts. She stared at the pages of the spell books Ashe and Mercie had sent her (her paranoia while hiding them seemed justified now) and the words meant nothing. She stared out her bedroom window and tried to spot Felix, but her bedroom faced an uninspiring side garden and she didn’t have much of a view of the grounds as a whole. She suspected the extra gardeners rustling through the rows of peonies would have chased him off even if he’d tried to yell up three stories at her – or worse, climb up three stories to her. She was too tired to figure how what a vertical _upwards_ climb would do to his extensive injuries. She wished Mercedes were here. Mercedes would know. She would know everything.

She started four letters to Mercedes to keep herself from asking about Felix’s injuries to an empty room. She threw each of them in the fireplace grate and watched the paper fold in on itself and burn to ash each time.

The fourth day had been the worst the last time, she remembered. Or at least, it’s when things had really started to get bad. She woke up determined to stave off that chaos, to cling to anything in order to avoid oblivion. Pulling Sir Fitzhugh Donneghey’s “The Application of Faith Magic in a World of Reason” from the bottom shelf of her wardrobe, where it sat safely nestled under a pile of winter scarves, Annette shoved the letters from the past month to the back of her desk and messily stacked the books that had gathered there on the floor beside her. She spread out paper and ink in front of her and took a deep breath as she opened to the first chapter of the book. She would take _notes_ and she would write _reading responses_ and she would _understand this book_ if it killed her – or, more likely, if it was the only thing that kept her alive.

She had just scribbled down a title and date at the top of her first page when the knock came at the door and she heard a key turning in the lock.

Annette was on her feet and at the door ready to open it as it swung inwards towards her. She awkwardly took a step back to avoid getting hit by the doorknob. Her uncle stood on the other side of the door, disappointed and unsurprised and exactly as she thought he would look.

“The library. Twenty minutes,” he said to her in clipped, precise syllables. “Change into something presentable.”

It wasn’t until after he was gone that she realized she’d left the book sitting on her desk where anyone could have seen it. Rehearsing past failures didn’t prepare for future ones. She never learned.

***

Annette poured a second spoonful of sugar into her teacup and stirred, watching the crystals dissolve. Her uncle had chosen the tea, some blend of spices that was overly bitter without milk and sugar, but she was willing to make the best of the situation in many ways.

They were alone in the library. She imagined her uncle would have rather met in his study, but they were in unspoken agreement that this was more neutral territory. Or almost neutral, she realized as she glanced around the room.

“More empty bookshelves,” she remarked, trying to keep her voice conversational. “Has Dominic fallen on such desperate times the we need to use books for kindling?”

“Annette,” her uncle warned. He glared at her over his own teacup. He took his own tea plain, and brewed it stronger.

“I assure you none of the knights tales actually taught me how to pick locks,” she continued, for that was indeed the missing section of the library; she knew that section at a glance at this point. “I came in knowing that already.”

Here uncle didn’t reply. She sipped her tea with more of a slurp than she intended, a tiny part of her pleased at how much that would annoy him.

“I’m better at it than I thought,” she added.

“Gods above, Annette, what were you _thinking_ ,” her uncle finally exploded at her. For the most part, her uncle never yelled, not really, but you could tell when his emotion got the better of him. What he lacked in anger he made up for in exasperation.

Annette was unbothered by anger and exasperation. She was not a child. “I was thinking that you probably didn’t carry around keys with you everywhere, and your study might be a good place to start looking,” she said primly, taking another sip of tea. He hadn’t brought any snacks with him, which was a shame.

Her uncle sighed. “You’re impossible,” he said.

Annette countered, “Then let me leave. I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”

“You know I can’t do that,” he replied sharply.

Annette shrugged. “I almost did three nights ago,” she said. “It was pretty close, at least.”

“You know, the most frustrating part of all of this,” he uncle said, as if he hadn’t heard her, “is that I honestly can’t tell how far-reaching your lie is. And you’re a terrible liar, Annette, so I don't understand how I could misread the situation so poorly. How I could misread you so poorly.”

Annette felt a pang of emotion tug at her, and was horrified to realize it was _guilt_ , of all things. “Uncle, I –” she started.

“You seem happy with him,” he cut her off before she could figure out how she wanted to finish the sentence. “He seems like he could make you happy. I want you to be happy, Annette.”

“Yes, the last three days have overwhelmingly demonstrated that,” Annette deadpanned. She was probably pressing her luck, but fours nights of sleep-deprivation were beginning to wear on her conversational filter.

“Well, you had us all fooled, I’ll give you that. I don’t know when you became such a good little actress. I pray he never finds out you were just using him,” he uncle said sharply, and Annette wanted to laugh, desperately and bitterly, but he kept going. “And for what, Annette? I told you that you didn’t have to accept this match. No one is forcing you to Fraldarius. If you really think so little of him you didn’t have to agree to an engagement.”

“I can want to marry Felix and still want to help my father,” Annette snapped, slamming her teacup on the saucer. The tiny spoon clanked with an eerie echo of the keys clattering to the floor a few nights ago. Annette bit her tongue to stop the outburst – she also was losing track of what was a lie and what was a dangerous truth – but luckily her uncle didn’t notice, as he was speaking almost before her sentence was complete.

“Your _father_ , of course, your father,” he said, with a sarcastic glint Annette was unused to. “He won’t speak to you, will barely speak to me, refuses to even attend your wedding, much less give you away, but what does it matter that I'm trying to keep you safe as long as Gustave has to suffer the consequences of his own actions for once –”

“Safe?” Annette shrieked, jumping out of her chair. “This is a _prison_ , uncle, you’ve thrown us into captivity. What are your plans for my father? You can’t just marry him off to some random willing noble. Why haven’t I seen my mother yet? You call this safety? Your safety will destroy us all.”

“Sit down, Annette.”

“You dare ask me about _happiness_?” Annette continued, leaning over the desk. “Even if I were to forget my father, my family, my country – even if I were that selfish – how can you think of this marriage as anything but a key, one that I’m grasping onto like any other key. You’ve never cared about my happiness. You only care about my political convenience.”

“Sit _down_ ,” he uncle roared. His own teacup clattered to the desk and broke, four-spice tea spilling across the table and dripping onto the floor.

Annette sat.

The two glared at each other, angry and sullen and both refusing to admit they were the second. Finally her uncle sighed, and sounded more tired than she’d ever heard him, which was a high bar to clear.

“What would happen, do you think, if you’d pulled off your little stunt last night?” he asked her, his low voice a chilling contrast to the shouting match they’d reached moments before.

Annette stared daggers at him. She took another sip of syrupy, lukewarm tea. After all, _her_ cup hadn’t shattered.

“If you’d made it out of the castle last night – and that’s a big if – where would you and Gustave have gone?” he uncle asked her. He didn’t wait for a reply. “Who were you hoping would help you? You think Fraldarius would look kindly on you, at this point, if your intentions became clear? You think anyone in the Alliance would come to your aid? Or do you think you could travel all the way Garreg Mach without being spotted, just two lone riders on stolen horses traveling through the middle of Empire territory?”

“I made it here from Garreg Mach,” Annette began. “We traveled safely –”

“And what would happen,” her uncle cut her off, “If any noble other than me found you, a traitor to both the Empire and the Dukedom, in their territory? You think they’d give you a nice bedroom, Annette? You think they’d start arranging marriages for you?”

“I’m a trained soldier, not a damsel from one of your suddenly-banned books,” Annette snarled back. “I’m only here because I was foolish enough to think that I could trust you. You think I can’t fight? You think I can’t kill?”

“Fine, then, let’s go with that,” her uncle shot back. “Let’s say you make it to Garreg Mach. Let’s say word gets back to Fhirdiad that two Dominics are back fighting at the side of the disgraced prince. Do you honestly believe Cornelia would be merciful to Dominic territory? I’ve heard what happened to that prince of yours; you think she is a woman who operates on pity and forgiveness?”

“Dimitri’s army is the only hope Dominic has of survival, Uncle,” Annette said. Her voice remained hushed, but no longer out of anger. There were certain things she knew she should not say out loud. “I realize you cannot openly support him, but siding with the Empire will not save you. It won’t save us. You can’t convince me of that.”

“What would happen to you mother, Annette? Do you somehow think Cornelia is above revenge?” her uncle asked finally. Annette felt as if the wind was knocked out of her. He no doubt intended that. “How would you save her, from your corner of Garreg Mach? Will your precious prince lend you an army?”

“Mother,” Annette whispered to herself. She slammed her teacup back down, and her hands with it. “You can’t make her stay here,” she demanded. “You have to let her go.”

“Go? Go where? Listen to what I’m saying,” her uncle replied in frustration. “You speak of this castle as a prison cell, Annette, so try this concept for a moment – this entire war is our family’s prison. There is nowhere you can run where Cornelia cannot hurt you. No lock on your door is holding you prisoner – you were a prisoner the moment you crossed into Empire territory. And you’ve made prisoners of us all.”

Annette tried to reply, but no sound came out. Everything in the room was hot, and spinny, and she had an unpleasant flashback to when she’d collapsed after first hearing of Felix’s proposal. She tried to think if she’d eaten breakfast that morning. She tried to think of what the last thing she’d said to her mother was. She couldn’t remember. She couldn't think. The room was so warm and she could feel sugar and worry coursing through her bloodstream, driving her pulse too fast and her breathing too shallow.

“Where is she?” she gasped out, digging her fingers against the wood of the desk as she leaned forward. “Where is my mother?”

Baron Dominic sighed, picking up the broken pieces of china from his teacup and laying them neatly on a tea tray. “Does it matter, Annette? What would that information do for you?” he asked softly. His voice remained quiet as he took a handkerchief from his pocket and began to sop up dark pools of tea from the edge of the desk. “If you want to help her, and I know you want to help her, then when you go out that door and you see the Fraldarius boy standing in the hall, find whatever side of you has been so good at playing a part these past few weeks, and make him believe this wedding is a good idea.”

“Felix.” Annette’s head shot up as she said it. “Felix is outside?”

Her uncle frowned, giving her a searching look. “I told him to meet us here, although this chat certainly went longer than I’d hoped – of course, perhaps I should have expected . . .”

Annette was on her feet and running towards the door before he was halfway through this monologue. She flung open the library doors and ran into the hallway. Felix was pacing a few yards away; Annette wondered if he’d been able to hear any of the conversation, or if, as usual, he’d channeled his nervous energy into movement and blocked out the rest of the world.

“Annette.” He said her name and he was walking towards her but she was running towards him, and she didn’t care about their ruinous last parting or his disappointed eyes or all the ways she had made his life worse. She threw herself against him and buried her face against his heart and tried to use his heartbeat to remember what steady breathing felt like. She was vaguely aware of his arms shifting around her as she clung to him, but there was none of the awkward uncertainty Felix usually displayed when she hugged him. Instead, his hands seemed urgent, and searching, as if by holding onto her Felix could make sure that she was okay, or at least understand why she wasn’t. He finally settled into a hand at the small of her back and one at the back of her neck, pulling her closer against him. Felix leaned his cheek against the top of her head, and Annette couldn’t quite make out what he was mumbling into her hair as she slowly exhaled, counting heartbeats, counting breaths, counting the slow strokes of his fingers across the nape of her neck.

She heard the library door open, and Felix gently pulled away from her, still holding her by her elbow. But rather than talk to her uncle, who Annette knew had to be coming out into the hallway at this point, Felix looked down to Annette, pulling her chin up towards him with his thumb as his fingers swept across her cheek.

“Is everything okay?” he asked, and Annette knew there were layers to that question she couldn’t hope to answer. “They told me you weren’t feeling well.”

His eyes darted over her shoulder towards her uncle, with a flash of anger so intense Annette wondered briefly if Felix was asking for permission to attack the man, or at least for a reason to. She brushed her fingers across the back of his knuckles and he looked back to her immediately.

“I know. I wasn’t,” she said, loudly enough for her uncle to hear, even if her voice was still shaking. If he wanted to think this cover story would work on Felix, then she’d let him think that. “I’m fine now, don’t worry about me,” she adding. She grabbed his hand more fully and squeezed it far too tightly. “Really. Don’t worry about me,” she added for emphasis, not entirely sure what ledge she needed to talk Felix down from.

“I see you’ve two have found each other,” he uncle said from behind them, and Annette was shocked at how quickly he slid back into the role of a cheerful-if-bumbling father figure overseeing a cheerful-if-hasty courtship. Annette turned to look at him. Felix adjusted his arm around her and pulled her back slightly, protectively.

“I’m glad to hear she’s feeling better,” Felix said by way of answering. “Annette’s not usually the type to let a cold slow her down.” Annette wanted to elbow him – sardonic skepticism was not a thing they needed right now, no matter how good it made him feel. She was certainly close enough to throw an elbow, but had little faith in her own subtlety at the moment.

Luckily, her uncle was inclined to let the sharpness slide. “Yes, the past few months have been hard on Annette’s nerves, haven’t they, dear?” he gave her a warm smile and Annette felt like she might throw up. He looked back up at Felix. “But she tells me she’s feeling much stronger today, so she’ll be able to join you this afternoon. But you’ll want to stay close to the estate, and keep an eye on her, please.”

“I’m sorry,” Annette interrupted before she could stop herself. “What?”

Her uncle shot her a glare that barely lasted a second before dissolving back into that smile. “Lord Fraldarius suggested to me this morning that an afternoon outing might be restorative for your nerves. He was, well, very convincing about the benefits and sunshine and fresh air. And after our talk, I’m convinced that you’re be much more up for leaving the grounds today than you were, say, yesterday. Don’t you agree?”

Annette gave Felix a brief look of surprise, but her uncle was waiting for an answer. “Of course, uncle,” she said softly. “I’m sure . . . I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

Her uncle beamed at them both and Annette found it deeply unnerving. “Do be back before sunset, my boy, these nights are still so cold,” he said, turning his attention back to Felix. “Perhaps Annette can meet us at the stales in a half-hour’s time?”

“Bring a riding cloak,” Felix said to Annette, letting go of her and stepping back. Annette blinked at him in confusion, still uncertain of the entire situation. Felix added as he turned to leave, “Don’t worry, I’ve packed snacks that are actually sweet.”

As if that even made the top-ten list of things she was worried about.

***

“I still don’t understand how you convinced him.”

Felix looked down at Annette briefly, then flicked his eyes back to tree he was tying their horse to. Her uncle hadn’t trusted her enough to ride her own horse, although the rationale he’d given had more to do with her evident fragility following her recent, unspecified breakdown, rather than his very real fear that she might ride off as fast as possible, if given the chance. But she was honestly too tired – in every sense of the word – to mind. For once, Annette was content to let Felix choose the location, which turned out to be a hill by a forest about a half-hour’s ride away. She was also content to let him watch after the horse, even if he’d protested many times in the past that he had no inherent love or skill for riding.

“It did take me like four days,” he replied, returning his attention to double-checking his knots. “I’m not really sure what Gérald’s game plan was, unless he just figures that if I didn’t see you for a few days I’d eventually lose interest and forget about you entirely until the wedding.”

“Maybe if he distracted you with enough swords.”

“Hush. Anyways, it wasn’t that hard to make my requests to see you increasingly frantic – I was more than a little worried you were being tortured into silence in a dungeon somewhere,” Felix said, frowning slightly. “Hold this, would you?” he added as he started pulling the promised snacks out of the food bag they’d brought along. It seemed to be mostly simples picnic-y items – sandwiches and apples and tarts, things that would travel well – but Annette had skipped lunch and she eyed the sandwiches greedily as Felix piled food into her hands.

“I think I got to him when I threatened to call a family doctor from Fraldarius,” Felix said. “That was yesterday. I don’t think he’d really planned this cover story very well; it would fall apart pretty easily and I think he was eager for me to just stop asking questions.” He pulled the last of the food – what looked to be a slightly squished fruitcake – out of the food bag and shot Annette a sly glance. “I guess you get your amazing knacks for schemes from his side of the family.”

Annette pouted at him.

“Don’t pout at me; you pushed me out a window,” he said, grabbing some of the food from Annette and starting up the hill.

“You climbed,” Annette corrected. She followed after him.

The hill evidently looked towards Fraldarius territory, although Annette couldn’t really see any difference in this vista than any other distant view. A large, gnarled oak trees grew at the top of the hill, and shade fanned out even in the early afternoon sun, but Felix and Annette picked a spot in full sunlight for him to spread his cloak out. Northern winters arrived hard and lingered long, and Annette relished the sun on her face almost as much as she relished the raspberry tarts Felix had managed to find.

“Who packed the food?” she asked midway through her second sandwich.

“I know how to make sandwiches,” Felix said, a little defensively.

“I’m sure,” Annette said. “But this sandwich appears to be . . . jam on more jam? Not really your style.” She took another bite.

“Lissa helped,” Felix finally admitted. “She also suggested the location.”

“A useful ally, then,” Annette said. She felt much better now that she was eating something.

Felix gave her a glance that was worried enough to put a slight damper on her cheerfulness. “She was pretty worried about you. I mean, I was, too. But it really upset her that she wasn’t allowed to see you.”

“I’ll admit, the people I did see weren’t particularly friendly,” Annette said with a sigh. The jam-on-jam sandwich was suddenly too much jam. She set it aside and laid back onto Felix’s cloak. Overgrown grass sticking out from the edges of the cloak tickled her ankles. “I wonder if my uncle did that on purpose,” she added glumly, staring up at the clouds.

Felix’s hand blocked out a cloud shaped like a wyvern for a moment, and he brushed her hair off her forehead. “They weren’t torturing you in a dungeon somewhere, right?” he asked, that hint of concern on the edges of his voice again. “I . . . you don’t seem . . .” he trailed off, then started again. “Why would your uncle let you leave the estate? I know you’re not going to steal my sword and horse and ride away, but he doesn’t know that.”

Annette didn’t answer for a long time. She closed her eyes – the cloud wyvern was too bright; the air was too cold even in the sunshine; Felix was too close and he was too far away. She felt fingers absently brushing her bangs back against and she leaned her head into it, closing her eyes tighter as she did. Felix didn’t ask follow-up questions. The wind rustled through the oak tree, which finally had leaves after months of skinny, bare branches. She wasn’t sure how long had passed when she finally spoke.

“What will Cornelia do to Dominic when she hears what’s happened?” she asked.

The fingers against her forehead stopped moving. She didn’t open her eyes.

“What’s happened with what?” Felix asked hesitantly.

“With my father escaping. With me.” Annette opened her eyes and looked at Felix. He was leaning over her more than she’d expected; his body blocked the sun from her eyes. “With you, Felix. That you’ve been lying,” she added.

Felix gave a final brush to tuck her hair behind her ears, and then nervously brought his hand up to fumble with his own hair. “I imagine she’ll be pretty mad at Fraldarius, but the Dukedom doesn’t have a ton of free troops right now. I doubt she’ll be able to send retaliation.”

“She wouldn't need much to retaliate against my family,” Annette said softly.

There was a long pause. Finally Felix asked, “What did Gérlald say to you, then? In the library?”

“What could she do to my mother?” Annette said, which didn’t answer his question but answered what he was asking all the same. “If she blames my uncle –”

“He’s been nothing but an obstacle, he wouldn’t be culpable.”

“– but if she _blames_ him, Felix,” Annette said. “What can she do to Dominic? We have no soldiers; our people are starving; we’re barely holding on as a practically neutral party.” She closed her eyes again and took a deep breath. “If I don’t fight for the kingdom, I abandon my homeland. If I do fight for the kingdom, I abandon my homeland. No matter what I do – I’ve failed everyone.”

“So that’s what he told you,” Felix said quietly. Something in his voice, some defensive intensity that she couldn’t quite define, made Annette reach out for his hand blindly. He took it, and she didn’t _feel_ like she was being a burden for wanting that. “At least that explains why your uncle doesn’t think you’re going to threaten me with a knife and steal my horse.” He squeezed her hand. “You’re not going to do that, right?”

Annette didn’t laugh at the joke. “I’m worried, Felix,” she said. “What if we save my father and my mother dies as a result? What if we save my family and my _people_ die as a result?”

She felt shuffling next to her, as Felix adjusted to lay down next to her. “Hey,” he said. She opened one eye and looked over at him, and he was close and he was listening and it almost felt like they were back at the academy again, the Blue Lions taking their rare days off to picnic and watch clouds and not worry about the future because the future was going to be fine. “You’re right. We can’t just act recklessly; there’s more on the line than you and me.

“That doesn’t make me feel better at all, Felix!” Annete said. She corrected her pout before he could call her on it again, turning away from him slightly.

He tugged on her arm, turning her back towards him. “So we solve those problems,” he added. “We’re already bringing your father along, if your mother is at the wedding then we’ll bring her, too. I can deal with one more in-law. And if the Boar won’t give us enough men to stop Cornelia; I’ll lead Fraldarius troops against her myself.”

“You can’t promise that,” Annette whispered.

“I just did,” Felix said. He gave her a soft smile, almost too slight to count as one. “We’ll improvise, Annette. Look where it’s gotten us so far.”

Annette didn’t expect to laugh but she couldn’t stop herself. “Absolutely nowhere. Absolutely worse off than we were before,” she said between giggles.

Felix sat back up, raising an eyebrow at her and still almost smiling. “I mean, I’ve got this great leg injury now. And you’ve got a wedding dress that’s almost falling off you.”

“You weren’t supposed to _see_ it at that stage,” Annette protested, pulling herself back up on the blanket.

“And you’ve definitely got a book of forbidden magic or something hiding in your room, so that’s pretty – wait, shit,” Felix cut himself off, and Annette couldn’t figure out why he was blushing. “Hold on, don’t go anywhere,” he said as he scrambled to his feet, hurrying down the hill away from her. As if there was anywhere to go. Annette looked up at the sky, but the cloud wyvern had disappeared into abstraction. She absently picked a pair of the white and yellow wildflowers that were growing in droves around the edges of Felix’s cloak-turned-picnic-blanket. She began to weave the stems together, remembering suddenly that it was Garland Moon. The small and scraggly flowers didn’t meet together the way roses or greenhouse flowers would, however, and she stared at her fingers between the gaps.

Felix darted into view and flopped back down on the cloak, barely out of breath although he must have been sprinting the entire time. Annette opened her mouth to scold him for running on his leg, which as far as she knew was still injured, but he pushed his hand out to her before she could say anything.

“Here, take it,” he said, dropping a small metal object into her hand. Annette fumbled with it in surprise and looked at it. A small silver ring glinted in the sunlight, a thin band with a single stone that had an air of expensive simplicity. It was the sort of ring that she and Mercie would walk by a shop window three times to look at on their afternoons off but that she’d never really been able to justify buying for herself.

“It’s an engagement ring,” Felix explained, as if that wasn’t obvious. “I told your uncle I wanted to give it to you while I promised you the future of Fraldarius or some bullshit. So, you know. The future of Fraldarius is over there, if that helps.” He pointed carelessly off the east edge of the hill. Annette barely glanced up.

“It’s really beautiful, Felix,” she said. She wasn’t just being nice. The stone in the center wasn’t a traditional setting and she knew this wasn’t a family heirloom, but the unadorned elegance of it made her feel a lot more grown up and sophisticated than she normally would. A Duke’s wife would actually deserve a ring like this. She would probably lose it in within a month.

“You can have it back, after this is all done with,” she promised him, slipping in on her ring finger and smiling. “I’m sure it was too much money to just wear for two weeks.”

Felix gave her a lopsided smile as he looked down at the ring and back up at her. “You should keep it, don’t worry,” he said. “I was able to haggle a pretty good price, and it looks nice with – it looks nice on you.”

Annette blushed, because his smile was cute when he wasn’t thinking about it and because she really didn’t deserve a ring this lovely in service of a lie this absurd. “Really, Felix, I couldn’t –” she started.

Felix rolled his eyes, returning to the Felix she recognized and could argue with. Except he didn’t want an argument. “I’m serious, don't worry about it,” he said with a tone of finality. “ _I’m_ certainly not going to wear it, so you might as well keep it.”

“I seriously can’t repay you for something like this,” Annette muttered. She looked at her hand again, and liked the way it looked, and that made her feel worse, somehow.

“You don’t have to wear it; I just don’t want it back,” Felix said, looking away with an awkward duck of the head that reminded her of their wonderful, horrible conversation in the greenhouse so many months ago. She always asked the wrong follow-up questions. “And I didn't ask you to repay me for anything,” he added. “Don’t be weird.”

“Do you want a flower crown?”

“What?” Felix asked, snapping his eyes back to her. They flicked down at the ring for a moment before meeting her eyes in confusion.

“I know it’s not really the same thing as an engagement ring, but it _is_ Garland Moon,” Annette added, holding up her flimsy wildflower chain by way of explanation.

“Don’t you need roses for those?” Felix asked skeptically. “Or like . . . fancy flowers?”

Annette looked at the wildflowers again. She wasn’t sure how well they would fill out a garland, it was true. “I could make it work,” she said slowly, trying to think of a solution. “I could just braid them directly into you hair,” she suggested brightly. She pulled apart the chain and tucked the white flower behind her ear, quickly weaving the stem into her hair until it disappeared. “See?” she asked, smiling at him.

She expected the scowl before it actually materialized. “Absolutely not.”

She ignored it. “Come onnnn, Felix,” she cajoled. “Think how cute you’d be.”

“I don’t – I don’t want to be cute.” Felix was the only person Annette know who could scowl in confusion, but he managed to pull it off.

“Sure you do. Look how cute I am!” Annette said, gesturing to her own newly-flowered hair. Felix looked at her and looked away almost immediately, the backs of his ears turning extremely pink. Annette stifled a giggle at how easy he was to embarrass – she’d called him a million things worse than cute; this was a ridiculous threshold. He shot her another scowl, which just made her laugh more. She sidled up next to him and offered the yellow flower to him with a grin. Felix gave a long hard look at the flower, and then a long hard look at her, and then let out an exasperated sigh and lowered his head to the side so she could reach him. She threaded the stem through his hair and tried to tuck it back into his absurdly complicated ponytail. Ignoring how the stem stuck out awkwardly at the ends, Annette sat back on her heels and clapped her hands together, beaming at Felix.

“See? Adorable,” she said delightedly.

“Find another way to describe me; you are _not_ making a case for this project as a whole,” Felix muttered, ducking his head away as she reached up to try to adjust a rogue lock of hair that she had knocked loose.

“As a whole? Does that mean I can talk you into more flowers?” Annette asked. The staring contest between them didn’t last longer than a handful of seconds before Annette broke into a smile, and Felix conceded defeat.

Felix rolled his eyes and shifted back towards her. Annette gave another delighted laugh and scrambled towards the edge of the cloak, gathering up a handful of yellow and white flowers from the grass beside them. Felix looked over at her as he sat back on his cloak, leaning against his elbows to prop himself up and kicking out his legs over the edge of the cloak so the heels of his boots rested in the grass. Annette clambered back over to him and sat cross-legged behind him. She plucked the existing flower out from behind his ear and placed the flowers beside her, and set to work undoing his hair from its braids and ties.

“So, what’s she like?” Felix asked after a moment.

“Hmm?” Annette asked. She was distracted by how long his hair was when it was fully down, and also, she had no idea who he was talking about.

“Your mother,” Felix said, as if it was obvious. “I’ve never met her.”

“Oh.” Annette paused, one hand balancing a yellow wild flower, the other buried mid-braid in Felix’s hair. “Well. When would you have?”

“You don’t have to talk about her if you don’t want to,” Felix said quickly.

“No, it’s fine,” Annette said. She resumed her braiding, adding the yellow flower midway down and selecting a white one to add next. “Huh, it’s hard to know what to say, though. She’s my mother, you know?”

“I get that,” Felix said, and Annette was reminded of how he managed to divert all conversation away from his family whenever possible.

“She’s really smart, and funny, and she’s better at singing than I am,” Annette said, and these seemed like shallow ways to describe someone even as she said them. “She’s where I get my magic from. She also went to the School of Sorcery in Fhirdiad, you know. That’s where she met my father. She should’ve been the gremory of the family, not me.

“Families can have more than one gremory,” Felix said. “And more than one singer. It sounds like she must be really proud of you, though.”

“Ummm, maybe,” Annette said uncertainly. She was pretty sure her mother wouldn’t have minded very much if she never passed her gremory certification, but she probably wished she had a daughter that didn’t regularly expose the family to mortal peril. Annette veered from that line of thought. “You can lean back, you know. I’ve done the top part of the braid.”

Annette reached out and gently pressed on Felix’s shoulder, and he leaned back into her lap, dropping his elbows and folding is arms across his chest. The yellow and white petals peeked out across his hair, and Annette was greatly charmed by the effect of her handiwork. Felix closed his eyes rather than cloud-watching, but didn’t seem interested in challenging her artistic vision in terms of flower arrangement. The wind rustled through the oak leaves again; it was a friendly sound, and Annette was once again reminded of school days and picnics and a sense that they didn’t need to hurry.

She knew the follow-up question that she was avoiding. She wondered if Felix wanted her to ask it.

“What was your mother like?” she finally asked, keeping her voice so soft that he could plausibly pretend he didn’t hear her.

For a moment she thought that was what he would do. But he eventually replied in a measured, almost prepared tone. “It’s hard to remember, sometimes,” he said. “That’s the worst part. I remember she laughed a lot. And she was good at telling stories. I don’t think she ever told the same story twice, unless I asked her to. I guess all mothers are like that, though.”

“I don’t think so,” Annette said. “She sounds like she was special.”

They were silent for long enough that Annette figured that was all of the answer she was going to get from Felix, which was regardless more of an answer than she’d ever expected to get.

“She also sang,” he added, out of nowhere. “Her voice was beautiful. I don’t think I’m just saying that. I think it really was. That’s what I remember most, I think.”

“What did she sing?” Annette asked. “That you remember.”

“Art songs, for guests, after dinner,” Felix said. His voice was growing more rough as he talked, and Annette wondered if he wanted to stop talking, but he didn’t stop talking. “And children’s songs, you know, dumb stuff about nothing. And lullabies. Sorry, I’m rambling.”

“No, you’re not,” Annette said gently. She started on another section of hair, braiding in a white flower against the darkness. “I asked.”

“I sometimes worry that when I talk about her, I get it wrong,” Felix said. “That I don’t remember her at all. That I just remember remembering her? Does that make sense?” He craned his neck back to look up at Annette, and she didn’t know whether to smile or to cry, so she settled on running her fingers across his scalp, above his neck, like he had done to her that morning. It had made her feel better, at least; maybe this would have the same effect.

He leaned into it for a moment, the leaned back to where he had been. He continued before she could properly answer. “It’s a dumb thing to worry about, I guess. I’m the only one around to remember her now, so what’s it matter if I get it wrong.”

“If you want,” Annette started, then stopped. Then started again. “If you want to tell me about her. Then you won’t be the only one who knows.” It wasn’t a full sentence and she wasn't sure it was a fully logical one, but she felt Felix’s nod underneath her fingers and it reminded her that she should probably get back to braiding.

“Maybe so,” he said, and his voice sounded far away, and Annette knew not to ask a follow up question, out of her own kindness rather than fear of his own sharpness.

The wind through the oak trees might have been a nice backdrop as Annette began to tuck the ends of Felix’s braids into place, bringing the flowers with them. But she sang instead, first a soft hum, and then a louder, wordless song, and then all the songs and all the butchered, missed words that she remembered from her own childhood. They didn’t say much more after that.

***

“Shouldn’t you have been the one to take a nap? You looked exhausted this morning.”

Felix was grumpy as he asked Annette, which she chalked up to him having just woken up with the news that they probably needed to head out now if they wanted to return to the estate before sunset. He also might have been grumpy because Annette’s leftover jam sandwich had gotten all over his cloak, but Annette decided that this was really his fault for not packing a proper picnic blanket, so she didn’t feel too bad about that option.

“I’ve been sleeping!” Annette protested as she packed up the last of the snacks and handed Felix his cloak. “Not well, but I’ve been sleeping. You’re the one who passed out after lying down for thirty seconds."

Felix muttered something incoherent as he fastened his cloak and reached out for the rest of the food, but Annette had already begun to walk down the hill and he followed after her in sleepy, grumpy silence. The silence followed them as they repacked the saddlebags and untied the horse, and as Felix offered his arm to help Annette up onto the horse. Before pulling himself up after her, Felix suddenly took a step back, still holding her hand, and cast one final, intense look up the hill, where his own territory waited out of reach and out of sight.

“We could just go, you know,” he said suddenly, turning back to look at Annette with a desperate glint in his eyes. “They wouldn’t be able to find us if we just . . . we could just leave.”

Annette didn’t know for a moment if he meant Dominic, or Faerghus, or Fòdlan altogether. But the answer was the same regardless.

“No, we can’t,” she said, pulling him back towards her and their inescapable journey back to the Dominic castle, towards her father and their marriage and all the things she owed the world. “We couldn’t.”

Felix pressed his forehead into her hand, silent for a moment. “No, we can’t,” he echoed. He pulled himself up onto the horse behind her and they left the view of the Fraldarius even more in the distance.

Felix seemed to forget about the flowers in his hair until they reached the gates of the castle. And then he remembered.

“It’s too late now, you’re never going to get them all out,” Annette said with a laugh as he started clawing at his hair, a curtain of petals falling around him as he tried to find the flowers by touch alone. “No one’s going to care, you’re cuuuuute,” she said in more of a sing-song tone than was proper for a lady, but one that caused just enough of a blush to creep up Felix’s neck to make it worth it.

Felix gave the stablehand who met them a glare that dared him to bring up the flowers, and the stablehand was smart enough to not take the dare.

“Maybe we’ll be lucky and everyone will have gone to bed,” Felix muttered as he begrudgingly placed a hand on her back to escort her back into the castle. The sun still shone in the sky.

They were not lucky.

At first, as Felix and Annette approached the front entrance of the castle, Annette thought her uncle had just been waiting outside to greet them, perhaps out of fear that Felix would return with a stab wound and no horse and no fiancée. But as they got closer she realized he was not alone – a tall, fashionable woman stood beside him, talking to him intently. Her red hair flowed over her shoulders and her makeup accentuated her high cheekbones while drawing attention to her dramatic lipstick. Felix stopped in his tracks as they approached, clearly confused by the tableau, but both Gérald and the woman turned at the sound of footsteps.

The woman walked over to them quickly, smiling bright. “And here’s the happy couple!” she sang, reaching out her arms as she drew near. She pulled Annette into a giant hug before Felix could reflexively pull her back.

“Annette dear, you’ve grown so much! I haven’t seen you in so long, but you’re quite the woman now, aren’t you?” she gushed as she pulled back to look down at the girl. Annette blinked up at her, bewildered, still not entirely processing why Felix was no longer next to her.

The woman ignored this, dropping her arms from Annette and stepping by her. “And I hear it’s Duke Fraldarius now, isn’t it?” she asked Felix, her eyes only briefly flicking from his hair to his sword and back to his face. “You’ve also changed – that’s a new style for you, from what I remember. It’s been, what, two years since we last met in Fhirdiad?”

“Almost five, by my count. Perhaps you’re thinking of my father,” Felix said tightly. He reached for Annette and pulled her back to him; she grabbed at his arm without thinking. She had no idea who this woman was, but Felix’s stiff and defensive posture put Annette on edge even more than she already was. He didn’t look at Annette as he tightly wrapped his arm around her waist; instead, he kept his eyes trained on the woman in front of them. “Such a surprise to see you here, Cornelia.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly Annette’s mom is probably a brunette or something; Annette gets her red hair from her father.
> 
> Also! Just wanted to add a note that we’re going to go on a mid-season break for a couple of weeks here. I have spring break coming up, and I’d like to take a bit of time to figure out exactly where we’re going in the second half of this. So maybe I’ll write some new stuff, or get ahead on this, or maybe I’ll just lie around and read Jane Austen novels for a couple weeks, I dunno! But regardless, no update next week or the week after, but if I’m not back after that you can all stand outside my house and throw tin cans at me until I post something. 
> 
> I will miss you bunches! Try not to set anything on fire while I’m gone.


	12. Felix Loses His Way

“Felix Hugo Fraldarius, the Shield of Faerghus. Duke of the noble house Fraldarius and right hand of the Holy Kingdom.”

Cornelia said the words like a litany, but it was more a curse than a prayer. Her smile grew a little wider at every new title, but wider didn’t mean kinder, or happier, or any of the things a smile ought to be. In contrast, Felix’s expression remained unchanged throughout her opening address. If he’d jumped over the table every time someone had annoyed him, he wouldn’t have made it to three and twenty. He had no doubt her trio of guards, quietly leaning against the back wall of the study, would have strong opinions on that course of action, as would Gérald, who sat behind his desk with as much smoldering authority as he could manage, given that he thus far had little he was actually able to contribute to the conversation. Cornelia had demanded a meeting between the three of them to “discuss affairs” that morning, and there was little Gérald could do to control the course of such a nebulous agenda. Felix looked at the window, and missed Annette, and looked back at Cornelia, and missed Annette more.

Cornelia gave him another poisonous smile. “Quite the list of titles for one so young,” she said, and Felix willed himself not to sit up straighter – he had nothing to prove. “And given to you so quickly; practically overnight. I hope the stress of so many names has not weighed too heavily on your shoulders these past weeks.”

“Thanks for your concern,” Felix replied with ice in every word, “But these are titles I’ve had my life to prepare for. My parents gave me three names at the start and a promise for more. Weight that you prepare to bear is not so burdensome.”

Cornelia’s smile didn’t falter. “You must be even younger than you look, to consider the title of Duke so lightly,” she said, returning ice in equal measure despite her smile. “It must have been a small coronation ceremony – I was not invited, I notice.

“You weren’t,” Felix agreed. “Neither was the Empress. Neither was the leader of the Alliance. Neither was the Prince.”

“The false prince,” Cornelia interjected, perhaps out of habit.

Felix ignored this, outwardly. “It was quick affair – my father died unexpectedly. I assumed the offices that awaited me were dependent on more than lavish parties and ostentation.”

Cornelia’s smile slipped at that. She was beautiful, astoundingly so; Felix didn’t need Sylvain around to tell him that. Everything about her was cultivated to remind those around her of the fact. She undoubtedly associated the duties of nobility with nothing but lavishness and ostentation. Felix hoped his disinterest stung, even if that hope disqualified him from disinterestedness.

“Your poor bride,” she said softly, sweetly, with chilling emphasis. “I’m sure she wouldn’t like you to talk that way, with her happiest day of her life right around the corner and you overseeing the details.”

“I assure you my niece is perfectly capable of adjusting expectations to a wartime wedding, Cornelia,” Gérald finally broke in. “And I’m not sure that wedding planning is particularly relevant to our business today.”

“Dear Gérald,” Cornelia said with a glance that was more pity than care but not quite pity, either. “You do dote on her. It’s a shame you never had children.” She swung her attention back to Felix, even as she addressed Baron Dominic. “But it is relevant, isn’t it? I was originally only planning to stop in Dominic for a brief hello on my way back from the Empire, but when I heard the great Duke Fraldarius was actually staying here for wedding preparations – well, I couldn’t _not_ stay an extra day or two and meet you, it was too perfect.”

“The blessings of the Goddess never cease to amaze me,” Felix said flatly. Gérald continued to glower and Cornelia continued to beam and Felix doubted any of them cared about the blessings of the goddess. “Are we done here?” he added.

“My, you’re a grumpy one,” Cornelia said. “You’d better be careful; she doesn’t seem like she’d go for the brooding type in the long run. But then, you seemed more cheerful around her, didn’t you?”

Felix very much wished Cornelia would stopped bringing up Annette, who wasn’t even here. He hadn’t seen her since yesterday, when they’d returned from their last real chance of escape and found disaster awaiting them. Gérald had claimed she had “important wedding business” to attend to all this morning, which was a lie, and they all knew it was a lie, and they all knew that Felix was in no place to point out it was a lie.

“But you’re right, we’re not done here,” Cornelia said. “I need you to come help me kill Dimitri.”

The room was deadly still at this proclamation. Gérald’s frown was so slight that Felix might have missed it had he not cast a momentary glance toward the man. Felix realized that he attention was on him.

“I’m sorry?” he asked.

“Dimitri. You know. Childhood best friend, ruthless murderer, pretender to the crown? I would assume you only know one,” Cornelia replied.

Felix could feel his eye twitching, which was a hard facial expression to control. “You want me to help you . . . kill him?” he said, hoping his requests for clarity made her look foolish, not him.

“Well, kill him, force him to surrender, destroy his army, whichever’s easiest,” Cornelia sang cheerfully. “From what I gather, though, the only way that boy stops moving is if we separate his head from his shoulders, so killing does seem to be the easiest option, yes.”

Felix had little love for the boar, he would tell that to anyone who listened, but his blood ran cold as she talked. He closed his eyes, focused on the matter at hand, and fixed a cold glare on Cornelia once more. “Fraldarius will be providing ample troops to Dominic once Miss Dominic and I return to our territory,” he said coldly, wondering at the back of his mind at what point “Miss Dominic” became “Lady Fraldarius” and at what point “my territory” became “our territory” in casual conversation. He continued, “I’ve left it to Baron Dominic to oversee the details of troop management to ensure optimal use, but I assure you that Fraldarius soldiers will be a pivotal resource for turning the tides of war in our favor.”

“Oh, you misunderstand me!” Cornelia said with a light laugh. “I’m not talking about long-term war efforts. No, I need you to come with me to kill Dimitri now.”

“Now?” It was Gérald who cut in this time, and Felix was glad he wasn’t the only one completely baffled by Cornelia’s request.

“Well, not right this second, obviously, we’re in a war council! If you want to call it that,” Cornelia said with a condescending look around Gérald’s study, where he conducted most of his business. “I imagined we would leave tomorrow, or the day after at the latest.”

“Cornelia, this is madness,” Gérald thundered, standing and slamming his hand on the desk. “May I remind you that you asked to spend the night – the entire reason you’re still here – in order to extend well-wishes to my niece for a wedding that happens in week’s time! To plan an attack on the stronghold of Garreg Mach, and seek our assistance, at a time like this, it’s – it’s – what are you _thinking_?”

“Gérald, sit down, you always were one for theatrics,” Cornelia said. “We hardly need travel all the way to Garreg Mach. The traitor and his happy band of school friends make camp at Derdriu; we can execute an ambush with a day’s march, at the most.”

“I have no time for riddles and no patience for mincing words, Cornelia,” Felix snapped. “I’ve given you the terms of my engagement and the future support you can expect from Fraldarius. As you cannot speak with equal clarity, I’ll go consult with my fiancée on floral arrangements, which will surely be a more productive use of my time.”

He moved to stand and walked out of the study, but Cornelia grasped his arm, her fingers a vice, and pushed him back into his seat. Felix resisted the urge to shake her off – social decorum kept him in place more than anything else and she knew that; he would not give her the satisfaction of knowing her touch unnerved him.

“So impatient, Duke Fraldarius,” she said softly. “We’ll have to fix that, someday. But for today, let me be clear.” She sat back in her chair and straightened her skirts, then looked up at Gérald and Felix, her smile gone now.

“Two days ago Dimitri’s troops marched on Derdriu, interfering with business between the Empire and a faction of the Alliance led by von Riegan’s so-called grandson. They were evidently victorious, and rumors have it that the Alliance moves even now to join behind them. I was in the Empire when Emperor Edelgard received the news; you can imagine her reaction to such misfortune. I left immediately with the goal to travel to Derdriu with a strike force of my own and intercept the army before it could return to Garreg Mach. This is the our chance to dispose of that murderous upstart once and for all.”

“You’re too far west to do that, Cornelia,” Felix spat back. “Why did you come through Dominic; we have no soldiers for you here.”

“Dominic has little to offer the Dukedom, it’s true,” Cornelia conceded, and Gérald shifted angrily in his chair. “But then I remembered a certain report I’d heard of an upcoming marriage between two former members of this rebel army. I thought I’d try my luck and see if such defectors were free for an afternoon or two.” She gave Felix a smile that showed too many teeth. “If you have time to pick wildflowers with your true love, Duke Fraldarius, surely you have time to secure her future.”

“This is a farce,” Felix said. He could feel his voice rising, despite his best efforts to remain collected. “I’ve been away from my territory for almost a month, I have no troops to offer you until I return home, and my wedding is mere days away. I have no time to play along with your slapdash power grabs.”

“It seems you’ve had little time to do _anything_ for the Dukedom, Felix, dear,” Cornelia replied venomously. “You can’t have spent a full month on floral arrangements – why haven’t you been organizing your troops to fight for us this entire time? If you’re not willing to work more collaboratively with your fellow territories, perhaps Dominic should rethink its hasty alliance with your House. I’d hate to see Fantine’s daughter shackled to someone so unreasonable.”

“With all due respect, Cornelia,” Gérald growled in a tone that was anything but respectful. “House Dominic is perfectly capable of evaluating its own alliances. The affairs of the Dukedom have little relevance to that discussion.”

Cornelia glanced at him, and suddenly her eyes glinted with malice. “I think the Dukedom has perfectly good reason to be concerned with how Dominic is conducting its affairs, Baron,” she said in a low, threatening voice. “Miss Dominic is not the only former member of the rebel army housed in these walls, is she? Gilbert Pronislav should be standing trial for high treason right now, not safely tucked away, hiding behind his baby brother.”

Gérald’s entire face flushed, turning the same red as his beard. “That is also Dominic business, Cornelia.”

“He was chief advisor to Dimitri –”

“It was an invasion of _my territory_ ; it has nothing to do with you.”

“Perhaps,” Cornelia said, ignoring such a defense. “If Duke Fraldarius won’t join me on this mission, I can take the prisoner and go back to Fhirdiad. That would also find me favor with the Emperor, I’m sure. Not as useful, but symbolic, you know?”

“His only daughter is getting married, Cornelia,” Gérald said, a desperate edge in his voice that Felix had never noticed before. “Have some compassion; this may be the last time he sees her.”

“A tragic story,” Cornelia agreed sweetly. “Have you tried telling him that? Rumors are he’s not even planning to attend. Shouting matches with his daughter after the engagement was announced? A messy affair; people will talk.”

“He’ll – he’ll be there,” Gérald countered unconvincingly. “He’s overprotective, but he’s coming around.” Felix raised his eyebrows. He supposed that was one way to read Gilbert’s reaction – if by “overprotective,” Gérald meant of Dimitri, not Annette.

“Will he?” Cornelia asked. “It seems everyone is coming to this wedding. Perhaps I should stay for the rest of the week, attend it myself. It seems like it’s going to be quite the affair.”

Felix slammed his hands on the edge of the desk and stood himself. “I’ve had enough of this,” he said, which was true. “Once the wedding is done, you can come to Fraldarius and negotiate for as many troops as you want,” he added, which was not true. “Until then, I ask that you leave me and my family in peace – we cannot assist you until then.”

“I don’t see why not,” Cornelia said, leaning back in her chair. “My request is so simple. It will only be two days – you can’t possibly have that much to contribute to wedding planning; I’m sure there’s no decision on flower arrangements that the bride can’t make on her own.

“Duke Fraldarius was recently injured in mission against local bandit raids; his leg has yet to recover properly.” Gérald once again swooped in to try to claim control of the situation. Felix found it a bit disconcerting to find the man suddenly on his side in negotiations. The Baron continued, “It would be entirely too dangerous to send him to the front lines like this; our castle monks have all agreed that it’s the best course of action that he rest and recover before the wedding.” Castle monks had advised Felix on nothing of the sort, but perhaps Gérald had picked up on the number of death glares Annette shot Felix whenever he tried to go to the training grounds – or perhaps he had simply noticed Felix’s slight limp over the past few days.

Cornelia gave Felix a look of pity. “Poor boy – and fighting bandits, did you say? So sweet to hear you have time for charity work in the midst of all of this,” she said. She looked over at Gérald. “But you needn’t worry about that. I have some of the most competent healers in the kingdom with me. They’ll be much more competent in faith magic; you should see the soldiers they’ve stitched back together for me. I’m sure they can patch him up for one battle. And I really only need him for one battle, after all."

“Gérald’s right, it’s too much of a risk,” Felix cut in. It felt strangely insulting to hear Cornelia speak about him as if he wasn’t in the room. He wondered if that was what Annette felt like all the time. “And it’s not a risk I’m willing to take.”

Cornelia fixed Felix with a calculating, even stare. “I’ll say it again, Lord Felix – I’m starting to wonder why we should believe that Fraldarius will take any risks for the Dukedom at all. You’ve shown us nothing to indicate your support, and we’re supposed to just hand over one of the finest and most eligible young ladies in the Dukedom to you? If you won’t risk anything for Miss Dominic now, why should I believe you’d risk something for her in three months, when you’ll probably be bored of her?”

Gérald and Felix gave identical starts forward, which was matched by the trio of guards across the room shifting forward in barely perceptible unison. Gérald grasped the edge of the desk so tightly his knuckles turned white, but it was Felix who spoke first.

“Give me a week, Cornelia,” he hissed at her. “One week. And then I’ll show you how much I’ll risk for Annette Dominic.”

Cornelia raised her eyebrows. “In a week, that damn Blaiddyd boy will be back with his precious church, planning a march on Enbarr with the full force of the Alliance behind him. I don’t need you in a week, I need you now. Does a little wedding make _so_ much a difference, in the end? If you’re so worried about dying, perhaps it’s kinder to keep the girl from becoming a widow.”

“He’s given his answer, Cornelia,” Gérald began, and Cornelia cut him off.

“Yes, but his answer doesn't make _sense_.”

Felix stared at Cornelia in disgust, and suddenly was hit with a flurry of memories of past conversations about marriages – Ingrid throwing letters into the fire and Sylvain drunkenly slurring his words and his father reminding him of his duty to the family far too soon after Glenn had died. And Glenn had died. And Felix was no longer the second son.

“I need an heir,” he said tersely, placing his hands on the desk and leaning forward. Cornelia looked at him in surprise, but didn’t reply. He continued, “I am the last of Fraldarius line. There are no more Crests in my family. There’s barely a family.” He cast a look to Gérald, whose face was unreadable, then back to Cornelia. “One I’m ensured . . . once I know the family line will continue, my sword and shield are yours, Cornelia. But if you won’t even give me until my _wedding_ , then this conversation is over.”

Cornelia stared at him blankly for a moment, and then gave him a smile that was chilling because, for once, her delight at the situation seemed sincere. Grotesque, but sincere.

“And here I thought that you legitimately cared for the girl,” she said, putting her hand to her mouth to hide a small laugh. “Duke Fraldarius, I misread you.” She stood up, and her trio of guards snapped into ready formation. “It appears we’ve reached a stalemate on this conversation, at least for the moment. I have much to think about, but I think I shall retire to my room. You _will_ let me stay until the wedding, Gérald, won’t you? I’d love to see Fantine again.”

She sauntered out of the room before Gérald could give a reply. Felix turned and wordlessly looked at the man. He suddenly realized how much he looked like his brother. They both wore exhaustion as if it would never fade.

“Gérald, I –” Felix began, unsure how he would finish the sentence, but Gérald held up a hand to stop him before he could try.

“Get out, boy,” he growled across the table, refusing to look at Felix. “Just . . . go.”

Felix stumbled out of the room. He began listening for Annette’s singing before he even realized that he was trying to find her.

***

Felix didn’t have to listen to find Annette, in the end – which was good, because as she’d told him when he first arrived in Dominic, she didn’t really sing much these days. She ambushed him as he rounded the first corner outside of the study, grabbing her arm and looking up at him anxiously. He wondered how obviously she’d been eavesdropping before Cornelia left the meeting.

“How’d it go?” she asked him hurriedly. “She certainly looked pleased, which can’t be good. I thought I heard Dimitri’s name. Is he alright? Are you alright?”

She said this all rather fast, and Felix cast a nervous glance over his shoulder and then back down the hallway. Annette wasn’t the only one capable of listening at keyholes. He grabbed her hand, intertwining their fingers, and dragged her away from Gérald’s study before the man followed up behind them.

“Not here,” he said. “Not now. Come on.”

It wasn’t that Felix ignored Annette’s small squeak as he barreled down the hallway towards the main atrium of the castle. He also wasn’t ignoring her occasional questions, asking about the meeting, asking about Cornelia, asking if Felix was okay. Annette knew better than to ask if Dimitri was okay as they exited the castle and Felix immediately began walking towards the hedge maze. She eventually stopped asking questions altogether, swapping them out for worried glances at Felix and occasional sighs. And Felix eventually remembered to walk more slowly, to relax his grip around her fingers a bit more, to let her catch her breath as they plunged into the hedge maze and he made his way towards that central fountain. And he wasn’t ignoring her. He just couldn’t handle looking at her right then.

He wasn’t sure _where_ to look right then, which is probably why he messed up the pattern of the maze that he’d been memorizing for the better part of a month, and he instead led them to a dead end that led to a dead end that led to a dead end.

On the final dead end, Felix seriously considered challenging a shrubbery to a sparring match – it wouldn’t block his path so smugly if he took a sword to it – but settled for dropping Annette’s hand and stopping his rampage away from the castle. He covered his face with his hand and gave an infuriated sigh.

He felt her hand again, gently resting on his arm, and Felix finally looked down to her. Her face was pinched, her complexion far too pale even as her cheeks were flushed from his forced march across the estate. He doubted that she’d slept last night – he knew he hadn’t – which she could add to her long list of sleepless nights this week as Felix wandered around her family castle accomplishing nothing and saving no one.

“Felix,” she said, her voice both too calm and too worried for him to bear, “what happened in there? What did she say?”

Felix grabbed her each of her arms and moved closer towards her, inadvertently pressing them both against the leafy side wall of the hedge maze. “We’ve got to leave,” he said, his voice low, even though he was certain they hadn’t been followed. “We’ve got to get you out of here; why was I so _stupid_ to bring you back here yesterday, we had a _chance_ yesterday –”

“Felix,” Annette said, and he couldn’t meet her eyes. He looked back around the abandoned dead end of the maze, instead, on his guard against ghosts and shadows. “Felix, what happened?” Annette asked, and her voice seemed far away.

Felix dropped her arms and took a step back. “She’s toying with us, Annette, and I don’t know what her end game is,” he said. He gave a final look behind them, seeing no one. He closed his eyes, tried to will his brain to think straight. “She’s after Dimitri, she threatened your father, she doesn’t seem to believe me about anything – and I don’t like the way she talks about you. You can’t stay here; she sees you as some sort of leverage. We have to leave. We have to leave right now. We can be to Fraldarius by nightfall, and from there Garreg Mach is only –”

He felt Annette’s hands wrap around his wrist and she pulled him back towards her. He left off midsentence, stumbling forward, uncertain of what he was even trying to say. Annette pulled him against her and reached her other hand up to cup his face, dragging his gaze down towards her.

“Felix,” she said again, softly. “Felix, look at me.” Reflexively, Felix shut his eyes tighter. “No, listen. Look at me,” she repeated. He opened his eyes and stared into stormy oceans. He tried to focus on Annette’s face but kept getting distracted by Cornelia’s smirk and Gérald’s fury and Dimitri throwing him against a wall and the possibility that Annette would never, ever find her way out of here and he would be the one to blame. Annette tugged on his sleeve gently and he realized he’d closed his eyes again. “Look at me, Felix.” And her voice was gentle.

He looked at her, and when he did, she smiled, just for a moment, and he grabbed at her elbow without thinking about it. “There we go,” she said, her voice still soft and calming, like a song. “Take a deep breath, okay? Take a deep breath and focus on something else for a moment.”

“Annette,” Felix said hoarsely, and he didn’t bother to finish whatever that sentence was supposed to be. She gave him another small smile and mimicked a deep breath. Four counts in. Four counts out. It seemed almost musical.

“Anything else. The clouds, maybe, or the flowers,” Annette said. “It helps me feel grounded. Just pick something to focus on – something real. Something here.”

Felix focused on Annette.

He focused on the freckles across her nose and the lone faded freckle to the side of her right eye that always seemed to be there, even in winter. He focused on the way her eyelashes seemed to glance against the freckle when she blinked; he tried to slow down time to mark the moment of connection. She breathed four counts in.

Felix thought about the way her nose bunched up when she was concerned or angry or concentrating, how it was crinkled now, even when she was trying to be calm. He looked at the spot on her cheek where there would be a dimple if she smiled, and tried to remember what it had looked like, and what it would look like, for Annette to smile without reservation. She breathed four counts out.

Felix thought about Annette back at the monastery, or before the war, laughing so hard that he could hear her across the grounds and peeking out at him from over a stack of books and listening to her friends talk as if it were truly the most interesting conversation she had ever heard. He remembered her song lyrics, every one, and they made as little sense now as they did before but he could remember them, all the same, as if they were the only thing left of the Officer’s Academy. He remembered her wandering through the greenhouse as if it were a dance, or a ritual, droplets of watering flinging through the air as she pirouetted with her watering can to the next row of sunflowers.

“Better?” Annette asked him in the present, and he blinked at her, realizing that he’d been breathing without the counting for some time now.

“I guess,” he said, and he didn’t know whether to drop her arm or to pull her closer, so he left his hands as they were.

“What did you think about?” she asked him pleasantly, a ghost of a dimple flickering on her cheek.

“Fencing footwork,” he said immediately.

“Oh?” she made a face at him. “Well, whatever works for you, I guess! I sometimes recite Mercie’s banana bread recipe.”

“That seems less concrete than what you were asking for,” Felix said, as he was a hypocrite.

Annette grinned at him. “When you love something as much as I love Mercie’s banana bread, it’s easy to focus on.” Felix wasn’t sure what expression he made in response to that, but her eyebrows knit together in concern once more. “Can you tell me what happened now? It must have been bad,” she said.

Felix took a deep breath, trying to unscramble his thoughts now that his heart rate had returned to something within the realm of normal. He secretly thought his original plan of finding Annette, stealing a horse, and getting as far away from Castle Dominic as possible was still the best option. But he’d had enough of people talking about Annette like she was an object in the last hour. The least he could do was tell her what was going on. If he could figure out what was going on.

“Cornelia wants Dimitri dead,” he said, figuring he’d best start with the most important details first. He pulled away from her and leaned against the opposite wall of the hedge maze. It hadn’t gotten any more comfortable since the last time he was leaning against the wall of a hedge maze.

Annette wrinkled her nose but didn’t look particularly worried. “Okay,” she said, drawing out the second syllable. “I don’t like it, but I think we already knew that.”

“She wants to march on his army this week. And she wants me to go with her,” Felix clarified.

Annette winced at this. “That seems worse.”

“I think she’s planning on staying here until I agree to go with her. She’s asked to stay for the wedding,” Felix added.

“That seems _much_ worse,” Annette agreed.

Felix swallowed, grimly steeling himself to deliver worse news yet. “And she’s using your father as leverage. I’m worried that if I don’t agree to help she’ll take him back to the capital.”

Annette stared at him for a moment, took a deep breath in, and covered her mouth with her hands to muffle the strangled sound that came out as she exhaled – somewhere between a sob and a scream of frustration. She closed her eyes and breathed in again. Felix didn’t have the heart to continue the list of complications that Cornelia had brought with her. He reached out and rested his hand on her shoulder, and she stepped into his embrace with a strange mixture of desperation and composure. She rested her forehead against his collarbone and blindly grabbed at his jacket with both her hands.

“Two eggs, beaten,” she mumbled against him, to no one but herself. “Half a cup of sugar. Mix the dry ingredients first and then add in the milk and mashed bananas.”

Felix looped his arms around her and pulled her closer and didn’t say anything. He counted off song lyrics about cakes for dinner and cleaning the library and other mundane, enviable things.

Every four beats, he breathed.

“Do you think they’re looking for us?” Annette asked, after she’d recited her way through three loaves of hypothetical bread and then lapsed into wordlessness that stretched into another three loaves.

“Probably,” Felix replied, turning his final breath outward into a frustrated sigh.

Annette stepped back and he let her go. “Then you can fill me in on the details as we walk back,” she said, her face set into a mask of determination. “And by the time we leave the gardens, we’ll have a plan.”

Felix took his usual place at her side as they walked, but Annette led the way. She knew the way out of the maze better than he did.

***

Felix didn’t feel any closer to a solution by the time they made their way out of the hedge maze and into the gardens, flowers waving back and forth brightly in the afternoon sun. But he did feel calmer as he talked Annette through the details of the meeting, and she seemed to process moments that seemed like disasters with the same steady determination she had adopted when she first heard of Cornelia’s plans. Cornelia wasn’t getting under Annette’s skin to the same extent, and Felix felt a brief flash of envy at how calmly she considered the situation. He was used to being the calm one of group.

“I think,” Annette said, lowering her voice as they exited the maze and walked towards the castle. “Our plan doesn’t change. She can’t make you leave with her to fight Dimitri; I think you called her bluff on that. There’s not a lot she can do until after the wedding, and after the wedding, well . . .” Annette trailed off, but Felix could fill in the gaps.

“I’m not sure I called much of anything,” he said, reaching up to rub the back of his neck, a nervous habit he’d picked up from Sylvain somewhere along the way. “She hinted at trying to break up the engagement. Or trying to take your father back to Fhirdiad.”

“She won’t have time to intercept Dimitri’s army _and_ execute my father all in one week,” Annette said. “I think she was just trying to rattle us. Why would she be trying to get a wedding invitation otherwise? She just wants to a wait a couple of days and see if she can badger you into joining her.” She frowned slightly, pulling up short as the reached the edge of the gardens. The castle loomed above them, casting Annette in mid-afternoon shadows. They would have to end their conversation before going inside. She looked up at Felix, and chose her words carefully. “This does mean he _has_ to attend the wedding. I won’t have a chance . . to see him again. After the wedding he won’t be here anymore.”

“Your uncle still hasn’t managed to convince him to give you away, right?” Felix asked. Annette shook her head miserably. Felix gritted his teeth. “I’ll go talk to him,” he said, grimly. He didn’t relish the task. “Tonight. If the guard watching him is who I think it is, I think I can get through.”

“I’ll come with you,” Annette said immediately. Felix realized she probably hadn’t seen her father since their engagement was announced. He wondered if she missed him, or if she just said this out of duty. It was hard to tell with Annette and Gilbert, sometimes.

“No,” he said, “I think I’d better go alone.”

Annette crumpled her face in annoyance. “Why? Afraid I’ll mess things up?” she asked him, and Felix wondered, not for the first time, how much of her anger was directed at him and how much was directed, always, at herself.

“Not at all,” he said. He tilted her chin up to meet his eyes, then moved his hand around to where the back of her neck met her shoulder. “Trust me, if it were up to me, I wouldn’t let you out of my sight until we made it to Fraldarius.” He sighed, and looked around quickly before looking back down at her. He continued, “But I’m worried someone’s keeping an eye on you. Cornelia knew you fought with your father, after our engagement was announced. She’s got eyes in the castle, somehow. Mind you, they’re probably keeping an eye on me, too, but I’m worried if we move together on this, people will suspect we’re planning something.”

“We are planning something, Felix,” Annette said. She gently prodded his shoulder. “We’re planning our wedding.”

“Something suspicious, I mean,” Felix said, swatting her fingers away but missing them when they were gone. “Something unusual.”

Annette laughed at that, short and bitter. “Well, it’s an unusual wedding,” she said, but her tone told him he’d convinced her. Her eyes grew serious as she looked at him. “If you can’t convince him, promise me you’ll get me in to talk to him,” she said. She grabbed his arm for emphasis. “Promise me that, okay?”

“Yeah, I promise,” Felix conceded. If he couldn’t convince Gilbert, he wasn’t sure what his other options _were_ , at any rate. “And you promise me you’ll keep alert, got it? Just . . . stay safe. I don’t like anything about this.”

Annette gave a smile at this, although it was wan and wistful. “You don’t have to worry about me,” she said, still holding onto his arm. “Cornelia’s not going to, I don’t know, steal me from my room in the middle of the night and drag me to Fhirdiad.

Despite himself, Felix laughed, halfway between a laugh and a scoff. “Which legend is _that_ plot taken from?” he asked. “It sounds lurid.”

“I can think of at least three off the top of my head. Legends very often are lurid,” Annette said. Her smile dropped for a moment, and she gave him a curious stare before reaching up and tucking a strand of hair back into place behind his ear. “Say, Felix,” she said, “Once this is all over – the wedding and everything – do you think that, um. What do you think we’ll –” Her voice drifted off as she looked up at him again. She was very close and their world suddenly seemed very fragile and he couldn’t help but remember what her fingers, small and soft and light, had felt like as she weaved flowers into his hair – had that really been less than twenty-four hours ago? Felix wanted to protect her and he wanted her to teach him how to breathe again and he was selfish and scared but he pulled her closer, sliding his hand from her neck to her back, and she pulled on his arm for leverage as she craned her neck upwards towards him.

A change in motion in his peripheral vision caused Felix to look up suddenly, out of paranoia or intuition or both. His eyes quickly found their mark – a pair of curtains fluttering behind the glass of a second story window. Felix craned his neck to see into the window and saw Cornelia, staring down at them with a smile that was as expected as it was unreadable. Felix darted his gaze away before she could register eye contact.

“What is it?” Annette asked, coming down from her tip-toes and pulling back slightly.

“Nothing,” Felix said, looking back to her. “I’m sorry. What were you saying?”

“Nothing,” said Annette. “Felix, is everything – ?”

He pulled her back against him before she could finish the question, because he was selfish and scared and there was no answer he could possibly give to that question that could help the situation. Annette stood on her toes again to wrap her arms around his neck, resting her head against his heart, and Felix abandoned attempts at finding an answer in favor of pulling her closer and repeating the same two nonsensical mantras he’d relied on since he’d arrived at Dominc.

“Stay safe, Annette,” he murmured, his lips grazing against her temple as he leaned against her. “I’ll get you out of here.”

The window was empty when he looked up again.

***

It was late in the evening when Felix made his way to the dungeons of Castle Dominic. Late enough that the parlors and hallways would hopefully be empty, but not so late that he would lack all plausible deniability. He hadn’t asked Gérald for permission to speak to his brother, but he could always claim he wanted Gilbert at the wedding for sentimental reasons if someone asked him why he was in the dungeons demanding that the only prisoner of the castle agree to bear witness to his upcoming marriage.

He was not surprised to see the familiar face of the night guard when he reached the bottom of the stairs. It was the same man who had helped him escape detection after he snuck out of Gérald’s study. From his conversations with Annette, Felix concluded that this was also the only other witness to her argument with Gilbert on the night of their engagement. An argument that Cornelia knew about. Felix found the guard’s sly smile as he approached to be as unreadable as it his frown had been the night he had agreed to keep Felix’s secrets. He was not, Felix feared, a man that you could easily trust with such secrets.

And yet, here they were.

“Ah, the fiancé!” the guard said as Felix approached. “I have to say, you look a lot better when you haven’t just fallen several stories. That’s a nice hairstyle for you.”

Felix walked several steps forward and grabbed the man by his collar, knocking his lance to the side roughly and pressing him up against the door. The guard had several inches on Felix, but Felix had the element of surprise – and now, neither of them had a weapon.

“I’ve had enough of this,” he hissed at the guard, who had the good sense to freeze in place rather than escalate the fight – for now. “No more smirking, no more speaking in riddles, no more jests. Tell me who you’re loyal to and tell me if I can trust you, or you’ll find out who exactly taught Miss Dominic to wield a sword.”

The guard didn’t look nearly as rattled as Felix would have liked. He glared at the Felix with a steady, angry annoyance. “Well, _your grace_ , if pressed I would have to say that my loyalty is to House Dominic. So it might be in your best interest not to press me,” he said, his voice maintaining a flat, insincere deference to Felix’s title that seemed absurd given the situation. “Besides,” he added, a glint in his eye. “Miss Dominic was not particularly adept at the sword, so your threat falls flat, wouldn’t you say?”

Felix had the dagger at his throat before he could finish the sentence. Annette was not the only one who’d practiced sleight of hand, and it helped that Felix was already carrying it. “I said, no more jests,” Felix said softly. “Tell me why you’re working with Cornelia, and tell me how much she knows about me.”

The guard’s eyes widened as Felix spoke, but not in horror. In confusion. “Cornelia? Of the Dukedom?” he repeated. “Have you gone mad? After all she’s done to Dominic you think I’m _working_ with her?”

Felix hadn’t really planned far enough ahead to know how to respond to this. He also had expected fear, or a fight, or perhaps maniacal laughter as the guard confessed that he had been fooling them all along. He hadn’t expected judgmental exasperation, which was the bulk of the emotion he was getting from this man. Who still, as they stood at a stalemate, didn’t move to disarm Felix.

Perhaps he trusted Felix more than Felix trusted him. Or perhaps he knew exactly which tricks Felix would fall for. Either way, there were only two ways for Felix to end the stalemate: move the knife forward or move it back.

Felix stepped back.

“I’m starting to get what she sees in you,” the guard muttered angrily, reaching down to pick up his discarded lance. “I hope your servants get special defense training if the two of you are going to be running the castle.”

“Shouldn’t _you_ have special defense training?” Felix asked, accidentally pulled into the absurdity of the conversation before he could stop himself. “You’re a castle guard.”

“Well I’m sorry I can’t disarm a general from Fraldarius territory,” the guard said defensively, the first real emotion Felix had seen from him that evening. “It’s not like I have the cell keys, anyways – I’m basically a glorified suit of armor; all the _real_ soldiers have been conscripted by the Empire.” He narrowed his eyes at Felix. “So now that we both have weapons and we both have space between us, you want to tell me why you think I’m some sort of spy out of Fhirdiad?”

“You were working here the night Annette spoke with her father,” Felix said. “The night I arrived.”

“I was,” the guard said. “Damn depressing conversation to overhear. Don’t know why she cares about his opinion so much when she has a perfectly good uncle.”

Felix let it slide that Annette’s perfectly good uncle had kidnapped her and held her hostage for two months now. “Was anyone else with you that night? Anyone else overhear?” he asked.

“Mmm, no, I don’t think so,” the guard said. “What was after we let Gregor switch to daylight hours. His nerves, you know. He’s older. So it was just me.”

“Cornelia knows about it,” Felix said.

“So what?”

“So how’d she find out?” Felix asked. He shifted the dagger in his hand subtly, but the guard’s eyes flickered down to it and looked back up angrily. He wasn’t as unobservant as he made himself out to be.

“You think I told her?” the guard said with a sarcastic chuckle. “Use your head, your grace. Why would I tell her about insignificant gossip and then forget to mention that I caught you climbing out the window of the Baron’s study the same night your lady was caught trying to stage a jailbreak?”

“I have no idea, but how else would she _know_?” Felix demanded.

“Maybe Baron Dominic told her. Or told someone else. Or maybe someone overheard him talking to his brother later – he doesn’t just leave him down here alone all the time, you know,” the guard said. He paused, and then added. “Or, listen, maybe someone overheard me and Abel talking about it at the tavern one night, I don’t know. She was crying when she left; the Baron looks like he’s aged 20 years in the past six months. But there’s a difference between drunkenly complaining about your job and selling your home out to an invading force.”

As the guard went through his list of possibilities, trailing off into this tangent, Felix had not-so-subtly pocketed his dagger once more. He watched, unarmed by not unprepared. The guard didn’t take the bait. Felix still never quite knew what was going on with this man, or how he had ended up talking about Abel, again – and evidently listing drink specials at the local tavern? – but at a certain point Felix needed to put his daggers away.

“Okay. Okay,” he said, and the guard stopped midsentence and looked at him. “I guess we can continue to trust each other.”

“I mean, I’m not trusting you anymore,” the guard said. “You pulled a knife on me in the middle of a perfectly pleasant conversation.”

Felix sighed. This was true. “So you won’t let me through to talk to the prisoner?”

“I didn’t say that,” the guard said with his characteristic enigmatic smile.

Felix felt himself smiling back, slightly. “Will you wait out here and let me know if anyone’s coming?

The guard snorted. “I didn’t say _that_ , either. I’d very much like to hear what you have to say to him. And unless you want to try your chances with that dagger again, I think you’d better just let me hear what you have to say to him.” His smile widened, and it wasn’t as friendly as Felix would have liked. “But we trust each other now, didn’t you say? I’m sure you won’t have any objections.”

Felix took the victories where he could get them. No longer returning the guard’s smile, he followed him though the door and into the dungeon.

Felix’s footsteps echoed off the walls of the dungeon as he walked past the relatively few cells to the back corner. The guard stayed behind at the front door, and the light from his torch cast eerie shadows as Felix approached the lone candlelight from Gilbert’s cell – the man was still up, although Felix couldn’t guess why. The barred window looking into the cell was small, and Felix wondered if Annette was even able to look into her father’s cell, or if she had to wait for him to come to the door in order to see him when she spoke to him. The thought made him angry, which wasn’t a good place to be at the moment – but he’d had enough reminders that Annette spent most of her life waiting for Gilbert to come to her, and his jaw clenched as he approached the door and peered into the cell.

“Gilbert Pronislav,” he said. “Or do you prefer Gustave Dominic while you’re here? I’m sure the last few weeks have given you ample time to consider who you’d like to be.”

Gilbert sat in the corner of his cell, and did not rise when he heard Felix’s voice. He glanced up at the door, and even though Felix knew his face must have been half in shadow in the poor light of the dungeon, Gilbert’s eyes narrowed in recognition almost immediately.

“Leave me, traitor,” he spat, his voice gravelly and rasping. “I have nothing to say to you.”

“Unfortunately, I have a lot I need to say to you, so that’s not going to work,” Felix said. Gilbert looked away, a useless act of defiance. Felix barely waited for a response – he knew no reply was coming. “You’ve heard, I’m sure, that I’m engaged to be married to your daughter,” he said.

“May the Goddess teach her shame,” Gilbert intoned by way of confirmation.

“Save your breath for when she’s listening,” Felix snapped. “Our wedding is to be in a week’s time. I’ve come to confirm that you’ll be in attendance. It . . . means a lot to Annette that she’ll see you again.”

Gilbert’s eyes flashed darkly as he looked back towards Felix. “And you save your breath for your vows, boy,” he said, his anger evident even through his grave, somber voice. “I will not sanction a marriage to an enemy of the kingdom, much less to an arrogant, traitorous –”

“I care not for your sanction,” Felix cut him off. “Annette doesn’t need your blessing and she certainly doesn’t need your permission, thank the Goddess for that.” Felix saw Gilbert visibly flinch at such casual reference to the Goddess, and tried to remind himself that he was trying to be conciliatory, or at least whatever version of conciliatory he was capable of. “She’s your only daughter, Gustave,” he said. “It’s her wedding day. She just wants you to be there.” He added, into the silence that followed his request, “You’re her father.”

After a pause, Gilbert replied, “I’m nobody’s father. I haven’t been Annette’s father for a long time.” He stared at the low ceiling of the cell, and Felix wondered if he saw his Goddess looking down at him, or at this point saw only darkness. “Perhaps if I had been a better father,” he added, “She wouldn't be here, betraying her country, throwing herself away on a power-hungry, backstabbing wolf dressed in noble’s clothing.” He paused for breath, then gave Felix a look of pure disdain. “Dimitri was your best friend, boy. He spoke of you . . . so highly. My daughter is a fool, but she deserved to love someone better than you.”

There was a lot for Felix to unpack in Gilbert’s dismal monologue, but what he actually ended up saying, gripping his nails into his palms as he so often did when he heard Dimitri’s name, was, “Annette doesn’t love me."

It wasn’t what he expected to say (at this point Felix wasn’t sure if he was ever _expecting_ to say anything), but he didn’t see the point in lying about this to Gilbert. He hadn’t had time to unpack the conversation he had overheard between Annette and her uncle the day before. But he had heard her desperately yelling that her marriage – that Felix – was a key to a lock, a way out of a prison cell, not something borne of love or affection or any of the noble, beautiful fairy tale motivations that Felix so despised and Annette so deserved. There probably wasn't any point in lying to _himself_ about this, either.

It was hard to see in the shadowed cell, but Gilbert seemed truly surprised for the first time in this conversation. “What?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

“Annette doesn’t love me,” Felix said again, and it should have been easier the second time. He heard a clatter down the hall and shot an angry glance at the guard, who picked up his spear and hastily went back to pretending like he wasn’t paying attention. What Felix wouldn’t give for five seconds of actual privacy instead of double meanings and meted out truths.

“Why would she –” Gilbert cut himself off, too proud to carry on an actual conversation with someone so beneath his contempt, but Felix took his meaning all the same.

“Because I’m convenient, you foolish old man,” Felix snarled, and in the darkness, the sneer on his face could not be entirely for the benefit of the eavesdropping guard. “Maybe she just wants to get out of Dominic. Maybe she thinks she can escape to her precious Blue Lions more easily this way. Maybe she thinks she can convince me to side against the Empire more easily as my wife than as a hostage. Maybe if you actually _listened_ to her, you could figure it out.”

He doubted, even if news of this conversation got back to Cornelia, that it would surprise her very much. Annette would not be the first woman to make a match purely of political and personal expedience. He would not be the first groom to be aware that he was useful rather than beloved. And Felix had never been one to mince words. But his words seemed to have finally hit their mark on Gilbert, who opened and closed his mouth several times, but never seemed to find a reply to Felix’s blunt, bitter analysis of the situation.

“I hope to see you at my wedding ceremony, and then never again,” Felix told him. “Enjoy your evening prayers. Perhaps ask the Goddess for some discernment; you’ve always seemed short on that.”

He had turned away from the door when Gilbert finally found his words.

“Rodrigue would weep to see what’s become of his family,” Gilbert shouted after him. Felix’s nails dug into his palms again. He wished for his sword – not for violence, but to have something to hold other than air – but he kept his voice and eyes calm as he slowly walked back to the cell.

“Say what you want about my old man. Goddess knows I’ve said plenty,” he said softly, grabbing hold of one of the bars of the cell as he peered into it one last time. “But at least he died looking after the people he loved. You’ve lived your life by running away and calling it noble, and that’s what you’re doing now. So forgive me if I don’t care what you think about my _father_ , Gustave. I doubt he’d think much of you right now, either.”

Gilbert glowered at him, apparently uninterested in Felix’s opinion of his life decisions. Felix glared back and dropped his hand from the door.

“Annette wants to speak with you, so I shall try to convince Gérald to let her speak with you before the ceremony,” he said. “That should give you a few days to think about what you owe your family.”

The guard trailed after Felix with his torch in one hand and his lance in the other, closing Gilbert back into darkness as they left the dungeon behind.

***

Felix hurried away from the staircase leading down from the prisons. He considered seeing if Annette was still up, despite the hour. He wasn’t entirely sure if Gilbert had changed his mind about anything at all, and was eager for her perspective, as well as her interpretation of her strange, taciturn father. He was also eager to put distance between himself and the dungeons, though he couldn’t say whether this was because of subterfuge or because of his own personal discomfort.

“Oh, Felix darling, I’m so glad I caught you.”

Felix whipped around and locked eyes on Cornelia, who was hurrying after him, having seemingly materialized out of nowhere. He narrowed his eyes and didn’t reply, which he’d hoped would dissuade her from continuing, but didn’t. She looped an arm in his and pushed him back to his forward momentum, and he couldn't think of an excuse to go back towards the dungeons, so he kept walking with her.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier today,” she said, and her grip on his arm was uncomfortably tight. “And I think you’re absolutely right. You’re much too valuable an asset to waste on such a silly little side project of mine. It just wouldn’t make sense to take you with me tomorrow.”

“So glad you think that,” Felix muttered tonelessly.

“So that’s why I’ll be taking Annette with me instead.”

Felix stopped dead in his tracks and Cornelia couldn’t pull him forward. He moved to grab her upper arm, whirling her to face him. “What,” he growled, his voice laced with more menace in a single word than he’d managed to convey in an entire diplomatic meeting earlier that morning.

Cornelia didn’t care. Her responding laugh was bright and clear. “Well I don’t really need you specifically, do I? Any former member of Dimitri’s group will get me what I want. And they doted on her, from what I understand – honestly seeing her at my side might be even more of an advantage, in terms of psychology.” She leaned forward and reached up to tap Felix’s temple. He swatted her away, and his arm moved in slow motion.

“You can’t take Annette,” he blurted out. “It doesn’t even make _sense_. I thought you wanted me to even the fighting strength.”

“Well, that too, dear, obviously,” Cornelia smiled up at him. “But your little fiancée will be just fine for that, as well – didn’t you two meet at the Officer’s Academy? Are you so surprised that she can fight? You two must not have interacted much when you were there.” She pulled away from Felix, considered him carefully, then said, almost to herself, “And her mother was _so_ talented in magic when we were at the School of Sorcery together. Frankly, I can’t wait to see what her daughter can do.”

Felix stared at her in horror, unsure about which of his many complaints would best address such an unhinged suggestion. “Our wedding is in a week!” was the final, spluttering answer that he landed on.

“Same rules apply, Felix dear,” Cornelia assured him with a wag of her finger. “This trip will take two days, maybe three at the most. I’ll have her back to you in time for a final dress fitting and a practice run of the marriage vows if all goes well.”

“If all goes well!” Felix burst out, his voice dangerously close to shouting, late hours and eavesdropping servants be damned. “There won’t _be_ a wedding if she’s – if she –” he couldn’t bring himself to say it. “This plan is lunacy; it’s a suicide mission,” he finally landed on.

Cornelia gave him a sickening, calculating smile as she watched his emotions reach a boiling point. For once, her voice dipped below his in pitch and volume, a low murmur compared to her usual bubbling delight. “Annette Dominic doesn’t have the Fraldarius crest, Duke Fraldarius,” she said, softly and evenly. “That’s just you. There’s no valuable bloodline to protect in Dominic, regardless. Think about things logically, for a moment – she’s not nearly the same risk that you are.”

“You’re reprehensible,” Felix hissed at her. “No, worse – you’re delusional. Don’t talk to me of _value_ ; I have no time for these sick games tonight. My responsibility is to protect my fiancée long before it’s to protect your struggling, futile attempt at a new regime.”

He meant it as an insult, which was a dangerous move perhaps, but he wanted to see her insulted. Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately, depending on how he looked at it – Cornelia’s mask didn’t slip at his insults. If anything, they gave her more satisfaction.

“Of course you need a fiancée,” she said in a voice that was neither soothing nor reasonable, even if it parroted both emotions. “And if the worst should happen, I’ll get you a fiancée. I hear Count Varley’s daughter is nearly recovered from her injuries at Grondor. She _quite_ went up in smoke; I'm sure that she won’t be of any use to an army now. She could be a perfect candidate for motherhood, don’t you think?”

Felix reached for his sword, but no sword was there. He reached for his snarl, but his anger got caught in his throat. He remembered Annette, suddenly, and laughed softly, despite himself, realizing he was foolish to fall for Cornelia’s mind games. “She won’t fight for you,” he said in a low voice. “She won’t even agree to go with you. She may marry me, but that’s out of self-preservation. Fighting her former allies? Never.”

Cornelia reached forward and grasped each of his arms, giving him a supportive squeeze. “My precious boy, it is _so_ good of you to be concerned about negotiations, but I’ve already spoken with her. She’s already said she’ll join me.” She looked up at him and beamed. “I explained the situation quite clearly to her, I think – the little dear would do _anything_ to save her father, wouldn’t she? And once she heard I would either march for Derdriu or Fhirdiad, she was wildly enthusiastic about joining me.”

Felix pushed her away, glaring down with fire in his eyes. “You can’t _do_ this, Cornelia,” he said, hating the desperation creeping into his voice. “To take a girl from her family – from her home – days before her wedding –”

“My, you’d better learn to stumble less over your words if you’re going to survive long as a Duke,” Cornelia said sweetly. “I’ve explained my position, and I think I’ve explained it well. I still feel that you haven’t told me anything worthwhile, and as the young lady has agreed to join me, I don’t see any reason for us to continue discussing the matter.

She reached up and gave his cheek an affirming pat, and then quickly turned to walk down the hallway, returning to the same room she’d emerged from earlier. She turned and gave Felix a final, pitying glance.

“I don’t really care which one of you joins me, if you’re so worried,” she said, looking Felix up and down as he gawked at her in horrified disbelief. “You, or your bride. It’s really your choice, darling – we leave tomorrow at dawn.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't want people to accuse me of stealing my whole *aesthetic* from season 7 Cersei Lannister, but if you want to just picture Cornelia holding a giant goblet of wine in every scene she’s in, I don’t think you’d be wrong, you know?
> 
> Anyways! Hi. How. . . how is everyone? I will admit this was not the spring break I was expecting to have. But you know. We back now. Stay safe, stay inside, wash your hands. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you? I don't know. It’s a weird time.
> 
> Updates will probably be a more spaced out for the time being – I’m adjusting to working from home and I think cutting down on screen time is probably good? But we’ll get into the swing of things, don’t worry. 
> 
> You guys wanna some neat fanart y’all sent me during the midseason break? Here’s [ chapter 4 ](https://imgur.com/a/ax9ZdJb) (which people keep calling “the dagger scene” like it’s a Zero Escape ending). Here’s [ chapter 10 ](https://twitter.com/Pachipower417/status/1236108211654098944), which, God bless all of you for trying to figure out the logistics of that pose because lolololol I did not. [ Here ](https://www.instagram.com/p/B-dVhnAlied/?igshid=dh7kplcktswx) are a [ couple ](https://twitter.com/MayHMagnolia/status/1246370450009186316) of Felix with flowers in his hair, because you all are good and true and understand what the world needs. Shoot me a link if I’ve missed you and I’ll add you next chapter – and give these artists a follow! I keep using the phrase “bonkers talented” and I stand by that.
> 
> [ Give me a follow, too, I’m on twitter now. ](https://twitter.com/Rose3Writes) We can brainstorm together about what Annette would name her cats.
> 
> You are all lovely and I hope for nothing but the best for you. Take care of yourself and your loved ones; I’ll be back soon


	13. Annette Rests

Annette expected the knock. She wasn’t sure if she hoped for it or she dreaded it, but she expected it.

A small traveling bag lay on her desk, ready to take with her tomorrow. Cornelia had assured her that she’d only be gone for “two or three nights at the most.” Annette had packed clothes for two days and stolen into the kitchen and gotten rations for six. She was prepared to run if necessary. You didn’t need a plan to have snacks; that had always been her philosophy.

Annette had gotten ready for bed, but she knew even as she went through the motions of brushing her hair and slipping on her nightgown that she wouldn’t fall asleep that night. Agreeing to go with Cornelia was a mistake. She knew it was a mistake. But she had gravely miscalculated the situation earlier that day, and Cornelia had dealt a stronger hand than Annette was able counter. Annette knew she would rather die on the battlefield than watch her father be carted off to an executioner’s block because she was weak and scared and indecisive. She would also rather die on a battlefield than raise a hand against Mercie, or Ashe, or Dimitri, even if she didn’t know who Dimitri was anymore. As she didn’t particularly want to die on a battlefield, she simply took the option that allowed her the most time before any of these options became inevitable. It was the only option, or at least, the best option that she could think of. That didn’t make falling asleep any easier.

She tried reading, but the words swam in front of her eyes. She tried writing a letter to Mercie, but every attempt to explain herself sounded more and more ridiculous when she put pen to paper. So eventually, she lay on top of the covers of her bed and she stared at the atrocious pink canopy she’d loved so much at age thirteen and she waited for Felix to knock on her door. There was no reason to believe that he’d find out about Cornelia’s change of plans, but she believed it anyway.

And she was right. Granted, the fact she knew he would knock didn’t help her decide if she wanted to see him more than anything or couldn’t face him ever again. It just meant she didn’t have to make the call herself.

When Annette opened the door, Felix pushed his way through without preamble or greeting. She glanced quickly down the hallway, but didn’t see any servants this evening. She wondered if her uncle had redelegated his meager in-house spy network now that Cornelia was on the premises – Annette leaving her bedroom seemed like a minor threat to the safety of Dominic territory at the moment, and her uncle was nothing if not practical.

She turned around to face Felix. “I know what you’re going to say,” she said quickly, shutting and locking the door behind her.

“Absolutely not,” he said, his first words of the evening. His voice was hoarse and raspy on the second word.

Annette crinkled her nose. “Absolutely not, I don’t know what you’re going to say? Or absolutely not, you don’t think I should –”

“Absolutely not, you’re not _going_ with her, Annette,” Felix interrupted, taking a step forward. Annette backed up instinctively but ran into the door behind her. “Are you trying to get yourself _killed_?” he asked, and she had to crane her neck to meet his eyes.

“Cornelia told me she’s leaving tomorrow, whether she goes to the Alliance or to the capital,” Annette said. She felt bile rising in her throat as she remembered the conversation, Cornelia’s voice as light and pleasant as if they were old friends discussion Annette’s honeymoon plans. She added bitterly, “She says she wants to leave as soon as possible so she can be back in time for the wedding.”

Felix didn’t respond, but his face contorted into a look of anger that she had only seen a handful of times, a much more aggressive, acute emotion than his baseline expression of passive disdain. He leaned one elbow on the door jamb above Annette’s head, ran his fingers through his hair with his other hand, and looked down at Annette. Anger and pity and hopelessness fought against each other in his eyes as he stared at her, and Annette remembered why a not-insignificant part of her had dreaded this, and why she had almost hoped she would leave in the morning without having to see that she hurt him. Again.

“We can’t let her win like this,” he said, softly, desperately. “She’s taken so much from us already. She would have killed Dimitri. She _wants_ to kill Dimitri. She’ll get you killed, and maybe that’s what she wants, as well.” He reached down and cupped Annette’s cheek, and his touch was so gentle that she couldn’t look at him anymore, and she closed her eyes even as she leaned into his fingertips. “I can’t lose you, too,” he said, so softly she barely heard it, and so brokenly she almost wished she hadn’t.

Annette turned her face against his hand, muttering into his palm, “Either I go with her, or she executes my father by the end of the week. I can’t stand back and watch him die.”

“So you’ll die instead?” Felix asked angrily. His fingers pressed her chin upward, and Annette forced herself to meet his gaze. If she was brave enough to save her father, she was brave enough to tell Felix she was going to save her father. It was hard to make eye contact tonight, however. He always looked at her as if he was taking her apart, piece by piece, and holding it up to the light to see who she really was. He was looking at her that way now. He asked back to her, “I’m supposed to stand back and watch _you_ die?”

“I -” Annette started. “You can’t –” She swallowed hard and stared up at Felix. He suddenly seemed very close, and the future seemed very bleak, and she found that now that she’d started looking at him, she couldn't look away. She’d hated the way his eyes tore through her when she’d first known him, as if he was picking apart all of her secrets for his own personal amusement. But in a strange way, she now craved the way he seemed to see her, how he could look at her and understand her even before she had a chance to explain what she was feeling. She hoped he understood what she was feeling now – that she was sorry, that she was certain, that she was glad he was here, despite everything. Felix opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out, and as he leaned in closer Annette remembered that mere hours ago (which felt like days ago), she had thought he was going to kiss her. Of all the horrible things that stretched in front of her, it was shallow to mourn that she wasn’t allowed to lie on her bed and hug a pillow against her face to catch wayward smiles and fall asleep thinking about how Felix Fraldarius had maybe wanted to kiss her. It was foolish to wonder if he wanted to kiss her now. But she mourned all the same, and she wondered all the same.

Felix straighted up suddenly, drawing Annette forward and back into the present reality. “I’m going instead,” he said, and it wasn’t a question. “If I go with her, she’ll leave you alone. She’ll leave your father alone.”

Anentte felt like she’d been punched in the stomach and couldn’t breathe properly. After all Felix had done for her, for him to die because of her own recklessness – she wouldn’t be able to live with herself. “Felix, you can’t,” she said, but he’d stepped away before she could grab onto him. She followed him into her room, grabbing onto his arm. “It’s too dangerous. Even if Dimitri knows you’re on his side – think of the chaos at Grondor. You could die out there.”

“ _You_ could die out there, Annette, listen to yourself,” Felix snapped, whirling around to face her. His mouth was set in a determined line; his eyes held none of the warmth she was so used to when he spoke to her. She had a sudden, panicked flashback to the way he’d looked at Dimitri since the prince’s return: a grim, determined soldier who felt nothing, because nothingness was better than despair.

“I need you, Felix,” Annette said, and her voice caught, and she realized how presumptuous and sentimental those words were but she forced herself to continue anyways. “I need you to stay alive.”

“Need me alive? For what?” Felix asked her, bitter and terse. “If you die, if I can’t – then I’d be – then there’s no point, Annette. Then I’m worthless.”

Annette pulled herself up to full height, which wasn’t much, and leveraged Felix with her steeliest glare, which was. Felix was many things – he was angry and stubborn and reckless and decidedly, assuredly _not hers_ – but he wasn’t worthless. And even if she couldn’t tell him all the tiny, wordless ways that he was everything to her, she could tell him with certainty why she needed him to stay alive, and what he could do that she, objectively, had failed at.

“If I die, I need you to go back home, and gather an army, and burn Fhridiad to the ground,” she whispered. “If the last thing Cornelia sees isn’t magic at my fingertips, then I want it to be your sword at her throat.”

“I’m not listening to this,” Felix said, walking deeper into her room, as if he could put space between her words by walking away from her. “I’m not _listening_ to this,” he repeated.

“I want you to free my family, and I want you to avenge my family,” Annette said, solemnly. “And I want you to tell Dimitri that I’m sorry. And that he was always my king.”

“The only thing I’ll tell _Dimitri_ , the next time I see him,” Felix said, his eyes flashing angrily from the light of the fireplace. “Is that he should have stayed the fuck in Garreg Mach until he was ready to march on Fhirdiad. I’d tell him to stay away from Cornelia’s army instead of taking sightseeing trips to Derdriu.”

“Wait,” Annette said, breaking eye contact for a moment and staring at the ground in concentration, although the ground offered little guidance.

Felix didn’t seem to notice. He continued, “What was he thinking, dragging an underprepared army halfway across the continent for some foolish rescue mission? The boar’s attachment to Claude is going to get us all killed.”

“No, wait,” Annette said again. “Go back to what you just said.”

“The boar’s attachment to Claude?” Felix repeated obediently. “I thought you knew; you and Ashe were such gossips back at the academy and he could barely string a sentence together when Riegan was around –”

“No, dummy, not that part,” Annette said. “You’d tell him. . . to stay away from Cornelia’s army.”

“Well, that would be ideal, Annette,” Felix snapped. “Especially as you’ve just enlisted as a chief officer.”

“Why don’t you tell him?” Annette asked, and her voice was too calm and calculating for Felix to continue his diatribe. He stepped back from the fireplace, closer to her once more.

“What?” he asked, confused but curious.

“Why don’t you tell him?” Annette repeated. “You’re the only one who can.”

Before Felix could answer, she brushed past him and marched to her writing desk. Opening a bottom drawer, she rifled through countless unsent letters and scrap paper full of rudimentary magic exercises and racy books she hadn’t wanted her mother to know she was reading when she was a teenager, until she found a roll of parchment and pulled it out with a victorious yelp. With the parchment raised over her head in triumph, she darted to the loveseat by the fireplace and unrolled it on the small table in front of her. A map of Fódlan appeared before her. Felix tentatively took a seat beside her as she leaned over the map.

“Dimitri’s army marches from Derdriu, correct?” Annette said, jabbing her finger on the map at along the northern coast. “And they make for Garreg Mach. So if Cornelia means to intercept them, the logical place to do that would be as they pass by Charon, right? Through here.” At this, Annette drew a line with her other hand from Dominic territory, intersecting with her right pointer finger as it traveled south down the map. “If we leave tomorrow and march all day, she can’t possibly hope to intercept them tomorrow. She must be planning the ambush for the day after. That gives you two days.”

“Two days for what?” Felix asked, his eyebrows knit together in concentration. Annette was, as was often the case, talking rather quickly.

“Two days,” Annette said, returning her hands to their original positions at Derdriu and Dominic, “to intercept Dimitri and tell him to redirect.” This time, she drew her left hand across the northern edges of the map, skirting above Cornelia’s path and catching up to her right hand as it traveled south away from Derdriu. She looked at Felix expectantly. “A lone traveler can make faster time than Cornelia and her battalions. Tell my uncle you have business in Fraldarius, and leave tomorrow. You can get to their camp by nightfall. You can tell them about her plans.”

“And what then?” Felix asked. The question sounded caustic, but Annette had pulled enough all-night study sessions with him to know when he asked follow up questions purely to develop an idea. If he truly thought the idea was bad, he wouldn’t bother clarifying. He continued, “They can’t just camp out in Derdriu forever; they’d be sitting ducks for another attack from the Empire.”

“They don’t have to stay put, they just can’t take the route Cornelia’s expecting,” Annette argued. “They could go . . . well if Claude’s with them they could go through Riegan. Or Goneril. It’s a bit out of the way but it could work.” She drew her finger to the east, heading away from the logical point of ambush and drawing Dimitri’s imaginary army in a wide loop circling around back to the monastery.

She’d barely begun to move back towards the mountains surrounding Garreg Mach, however, when Felix grabbed her wrist and stared at the map intently. He dragged her finger back across the map to land back on Derdriu. Annette stared at him inquisitively, but he didn’t look at her. His eyes were trained on the map.

“Or . . .” he muttered under his breath. Still holding onto the back of Annette’s hand, he extended his finger to rest parallel to hers. Slowly, he pulled both of their hands across the map, north of the mountain range and into Galatea territory, coming to rest in the northern region of the kingdom.

Annette blinked at the map, and then looked back at him. “Felix, that’s that opposite direction from Garreg Mach.”

“I know,” said Felix, his hand still engulfing hers as she kept her finger trained on northern territory. “But it’s the right direction towards Fhridiad.”

Annette inhaled sharply, and drew her hand away from the map, suddenly finding it dangerous. “They just need to adapt their route. I wasn’t suggesting a battle plan, Felix.”

“I know,” Felix said, drumming his now-free fingers against northern Faerghus. “But I am.” He stood up, beginning to pace in front of the fireplace, all nervous energy and half-formed ideas once more. “Cornelia’s not going to stop until Dimitri is dead, and as long as she controls Faerghus, Dominic will always be in danger.” He looked over at Annette, who was gaping at him. “It’s not just Dominic, of course,” he said hurriedly. “The boar has been so bent on revenge that he’s lost sight of the good of the Kingdom. We both know this. But if he’s putting aside his vendetta to rescue Alliance allies, then. . .” Felix trailed off, looking into the dying embers in Annette’s fireplace. The reddish gold light reflected in his eyes, which seemed molten as he concentrated.

“Then what, Felix?” Annette prompted. She couldn’t bring herself to say it herself. Hope seemed too dangerous.

Felix looked back at her, and his eyes had hope, and they were dangerous. He said softly, “Then maybe he’s finally back. And maybe he’s finally ready to claim his throne.”

Annette leaned over the map and traced her fingers softly across the capital city. She’d spent five long years imagining the restoration of the Kingdom. It had seemed impossible when Dimitri was dead, and somehow more impossible when he was alive but unreachable. He still seemed unreachable, to her, but to hear Felix say aloud what she’d wished for so desperately just made her wishes seem solid, and stronger, and recklessly within reach.

“I’ll try to slow down the battalion march where I can, tomorrow,” she said, a tacit endorsement of Felix’s wild plan. “To buy you time to get to them. I’ll set Cornelia’s skirts on fire. I’ll tip over the supply wagon. Anything to weaken morale, or slow progress.” She gave a sudden, unexpected laugh. “This is what I was born to do. Clumsy old Annette,” she said bitterly.

Felix reached down and grabbed her tracing fingers, suddenly, and Annette looked up with him more determination in her eyes than she had felt since she had proudly told Mercie about her grand plans to reclaim Dominic’s relic for the good of the Kingdom army. His grip tightened around her hand as she met his gaze, and his forward momentum suddenly melted into a hesitant, concerned stare.

“Is it too much of a risk?” he asked, leaning back on the loveseat, away from the table, his knee still jostling up and down with nervous energy. He brushed a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “If you leave Dominic, if I don’t go with you –”

“I can’t stay,” Annette said simply. “And you can’t join. People need you other than me.”

“I don’t –” Felix started, and dropped the sentence. He sighed. “What if I don’t warn them in time? What if I _do_? How will Cornelia react? If she redirects to Fhridiad – or worse, the Empire – what will happen to you? How will I –”

Annette grabbed his other hand tightly and gave him a small, tense smile. Jolted out of his tangent, Felix glanced down at their newly entwined fingers. The gemstone on Annette’s engagement ring glinted slightly, blue and grey and green in the dying firelight.

“We improvise,” she whispered.

“We improvise,” he repeated back, softly. It was a foolish mantra, and a worse prayer, but it sounded almost reverent when he said it. When he raised her hand to his lips and pressed against her knuckles, it felt more like a pact than a kiss – a ritual agreement that they would see this plan through. When he dropped her hands and sat up straight, looking at the map once more, he no longer looked uncertain. Annette wasn't so foolish to think that uncertainty had died completely. But there wasn’t time for doubt, and so they both set it aside.

“I can see you off, tomorrow, if you’re leaving at dawn,” he said, looking at the map, not her.

Annette shook her head, however. “Perhaps it would be best if Cornelia wasn’t aware that we’ve spoken,” she said. “If she thinks I’ve left without saying goodbye, she’s less likely to suspect us of having any sort of larger plan.”

Felix looked at her and nodded slowly. “Right, then,” he said, getting to his feet with a final look towards Annette. She found she couldn’t meet his gaze, suddenly. She knew they couldn’t stay like this forever, that she needed to follow him to the door and wish him farewell. Annette stared ahead at the table in front of her, trying to think of something she could say that could act as closure, something more articulate than _goodbye_ or _be safe_ or _I’m sorry_.

“Don’t.”

Annette said it before she realized she was going to, but she wouldn’t take it back. She felt Felix freeze, on his feet beside her, but she kept her eyes trained on the map in front of her, fixated on Fhirdiad as if she could actually see the castle and the city and School of Sorcery detailed on the faded parchment.

“Not yet,” she whispered. “I’m not – I’m not ready to say goodbye.”

Felix sank into the cushions next to her, and as she tore her gaze away from the map, she felt a foolish pang of regret that he seemed to have moved further away from her as he leaned against the opposite arm of the couch.’’

“It’s a long march out of Dominic tomorrow,” he reminded her, his voice as low as the dying flames in the fireplace across from them. “You need to sleep, Annie.”

“I know that,” Annette said. She took a deep breath before fixing Felix with a determined look. “Please, just – please stay.”

She heard the breath catch in Felix’s throat, or maybe it was a gasp of surprise, or maybe he was sighing at her. It didn’t matter – not when he looked at her and nodded solemnly, taking her request seriously and maybe even understanding all that was behind it.

“Right,” he said. Another breath. “Okay.”

He reached out his hand and Annette took it. Felix pulled her forward, swinging his legs up onto the loveseat and pulling Annette by her hand and then her waist until they’d navigated the close quarters enough for her to rest against him, her hand looping around his waist and his hands resting at the small of her back. Annette remembered the first night he had been here, how he’d rolled his eyes when she’d pushed him against the same arm of the same couch and kissed him. For a brief moment, there had been a part of her that had noted how easily they fit against each other, how naturally Felix’s hands found a resting place to pull her against him. That night she had reminded herself to stay focused, that her world had no use for storybooks and fairy tales – and that Felix had even less use for such clichés of chivalry. She ignored that reminder tonight, resting her head where Felix’s shoulder sloped into his chest, listening to his heart beating steadily beneath her ear.

“I’m sorry you’re here,” she mumbled against him, and she felt his chest expand as his lungs filled with air, a sharp intake of breath matching this somewhere above her. “I never should have come to Dominic,” she added, refusing to look up at him. “You never should have had to leave Garreg Mach. You could be with Dimitri right now, if I hadn’t –”

“Shhh,” Felix whispered, bringing a hand up to rest against the back of her hair. “Try to get some sleep.”

“I know that I was foolish,” Annette said. “I always make a mess of things.”

Felix only dignified these comments with another soft shush. “I said I’d stay and you said you’d sleep.”

Neither had said either, as far as Annette could remember. But Felix’s heartbeat was steady and his hands were steady and his voice was steady, and she didn’t want to tell him all the mistakes she’d made, not really. They lapsed into silence, and eventually his breathing was steady, too, and her breath matched his, and the world seemed weightless and far away until it wasn’t real, and then she wasn’t real, and eventually, Felix also began to fade away.

He might have muttered something into her hair as she drifted away. Something about him not being sorry, or him always being here. She didn’t catch it clearly. She might have imagined it.

Annette had no idea how much time had passed when she was jostled awake by Felix gathering her up and carrying her the short distance to the bed.

Annette could only vaguely remember when Felix had carried her back to her room from the library, what felt like weeks ago now. She remembered him being there, and then being gone, and she remembered thinking for a brief moment that he was still there when she woke up the next morning. Perhaps it was that brief moment, that waking dream, that now spurred Annette to reach out as Felix placed her against her pillows and moved to pull her covers around her. Perhaps she had grown more certain, as she’d drifted in and out of consciousness to the sound of Felix’s heartbeat, that he really had wanted to kiss her, earlier that day, and such speculation gave her courage to grasp at his shirt before he pulled away. Or maybe she was just fairly certain she was going to die at some point in the next forty-eight hours. She’d been much braver for far less, in the past.

And it didn’t seem brave, right then, to pull Felix towards her and to mumble, “you said you’d _stay_ ” and to refuse to break sleepy, hazy eye contact. She was too scared, too uncertain and anxious and vulnerable, to ever call herself brave. But when Felix asked her “are you sure?”, Annette felt certain as she nodded. When he whispered, “okay,” nodding back to her and nudging her back against her pillows, she felt calm, even as her heartbeat sped up as he curled up next to her, stiffly lying on top of the covers beside her. And when Annette leaned against Felix, one arm around him, and felt him readjust his arms to draw her closer, she felt safe. And those things were almost the same feeling brave.

For the first time in days, Annette slept through the night.

***

Annette woke before dawn, and knew better than to try to sleep again. She got dressed quickly and quietly while Felix slept, or pretended to, giving her the space she needed to prepare to leave. When she sat on the bed to lace up her boots, he turned towards the shifting weight on the mattress, and looked at her silently as she carefully double knotted her laces. “Good morning” and “how did you sleep” both seemed like a cruel joke to say, so they said nothing at all.

Felix walked her to the door once she’d straightened her dress and grabbed her bag and given one final, woeful look in the mirror. It was a useless gesture – her room was hardly large enough to require escorting – but Annette felt braver to have him beside her one last time, even if it was the distance from the bed to the door. He put a hand on her shoulder as she reached for the doorknob, and she turned around to face him, inquisitively.

“Will they give you a weapon?” he asked. “If you’re to truly join their army, they should.”

“I have magic,” she reminded him. He frowned at this, clearly not satisfied with that answer. He reached into his jacket pocket and conjured a dagger, the silent metal barely glinting in the cold predawn light from her window. Annette tried to recall if it was the dagger she’d stolen from him, weeks ago. It looked familiar, but Felix wasn’t sentimental and she didn’t know much about daggers. Annette wasn’t sure how quickly such a weapon would be confiscated – she wasn’t even sure she could use it very effectively, when push came to shove – but she took it wordlessly, concealing it up her sleeve the way Ashe had taught her with a dulled blade so many months ago. Felix ran his hand absently down her arm where the blade was concealed, and grabbed her wrist with sudden intensity at the last moment.

“Annette, I need you to promise me something,” he said, and pushed forward before she could agree. “Promise me, if Cornelia gets to Dimitri’s army before I do, that you won’t take to the battlefield. Steal a horse, run away, stab your way out if you have to. But stay away from the battle.”

“Where would I run, Felix? There’s nowhere _to_ run,” Annette whispered, still too caught up in the quiet of early mornings to speak properly.

“Garreg Mach. Another monastery. Any inn that will take your money,” Felix said, and his fingers tightened around her wrist. “If it comes to that, I’ll ensure Dominic is safe. I’ll keep Cornelia away from your father. And I’ll come find you, wherever you are. But you have to promise me you’ll stay alive.”

“I can’t –” Annette faltered, and her back was to the damn door frame again, and she would have told him anything he wanted to hear, stood on her toes and whispered a thousand comforting false promises into his ear, but she had told so many lies to everyone except Felix at this point that it seemed too awful a line to cross. And he was looking at her again, as if she was a puzzle he was trying to solve, as if he would know something worthwhile when all the pieces were together.

“Promise me, Annette,” he said again, and she could have lied and he would have pretended to believe her, and she could have turned and he would have let her go, but she didn’t want either of those things. She didn’t want much of anything that was being offered to her, at the moment, except for Felix to keep his hand against her pulse and to look at her as if she could solve things instead of ruin them and to trap her against the door, between the prison of her bedroom and the terror of the outside world, so that all that was left was Felix and her and that wonderful, impossible promise that she couldn’t bring herself to give.

Annette leaned forward rather than up as she reached toward Felix, but he met her halfway, as though he was expecting the kiss instead of an answer, all along.

Kissing Felix now, when Annette knew she might not see him again and that she couldn’t promise him what he wanted, felt different than she’d expected. It felt different from when he’d kissed her before. She’d grabbed at him desperately, almost blindly, but when his arms settled around her waist and he adjusted his lips against hers, everything felt unhurried and safe, like they could stay there forever. Annette had worried he would pull away immediately, she worried he would pull away even now, but instead he pulled her in closer to him and tangled his hand in her hair and in that moment she believed that he wanted this as much as she did. And being wanted wasn’t the same thing as being safe, but for a moment, they felt wonderfully similar, and Annette could have stayed like that, balanced on her tiptoes with her head tilted a little too far to the left and her eyes shut so tight that her cheeks ached slightly, for the rest of her life.

Except she couldn’t stay like that for the rest of her life. Except she wasn’t safe, and wouldn’t be. Except eventually she loosened her grip on Felix’s shirt and he pulled back to look at her and they slowly drew away from each other. And he still wanted her to promise him they’d see each other again. And the both still knew that promise was impossible.

Annette wasn’t sure what Felix wanted to say, but what he said, as he drew his fingers through her hair one last time and let the strands linger between his thumb and forefinger, was, “Be safe,”

Annette wasn’t quite sure what she wanted to say back. Maybe that she would try. Maybe that he should keep safe as well. Maybe that she loved him. Maybe just goodbye.

But what she said was, “I’m sorry.” And in a way, that meant all of the other things, as well.

She opened the door and slipped out before he could reply.

***

Annette had been given a horse for the trip out of Dominic, which surprised her at first, but the elite soldiers in Cornelia’s battalion could doubtless outride her, so she wasn’t sure increased mobility was all that much of an advantage. They traveled in orderly, quiet columns, and although soldiers in Cornelia’s battalion spoke in low voices to each other, sometimes switching positions in the column for a change in conversation, there was none of the cheery camaraderie Annette was used to with the Blue Lions. As few people were interested in talking to her, Annette found herself by the supply wagon for much of the trip, where she occupied her time by daydreaming about lunch and about Cornelia’s face if Annette were to set the supply wagon on fire.

It was overcast and, at times, rainy the entire morning. It was never quite rainy enough to call for Annette to pull her hood on, but she could feel the ends of her hair begin to frizz as she rode through intermittent drizzle. The roads were beginning to grow muddy and slick, the horizon looked murky and dangerous in the low visibility, and the soldiers seemed in low spirits to realize that they weren’t heading home to Fhirdiad, after all. Men dragged their feet, horses shied easily in the tense atmosphere, and the supply wagon always seemed on the verge of getting stuck in the mud.

Annette sent a new prayer of praise and thanks to the goddess every fifteen minutes.

The weather certainly did Cornelia no favors, but Annette made it her newfound mission to be a personalized, travel-sized stormcloud of misfortune, along with the grander meteorological plans of the goddess. And it turned out that being a travel-sized cloud of misfortune was something that Annette was very, very good at. When a soldier tried to make conversation with her, she steered him easily toward her time in the rebel army, and described Dimitri’s feats of brutal, savage strength in such detail that the soldier lasted barely five minutes before excusing himself to check on the rations. When another horse strayed to close to hers, Annette sent a silent apology to Marianne before subtly casting wind along the cobbled road beneath her, causing wet leaves and tiny pebbles to stir up and spook the horse, its rider holding fast to the reins for dear life as they shot off into the distance and disrupted the entire left column of soldiers. Annette overestimated her subtly and was certain that Cornelia whirled around and gave her a sharp glance when she aimed another wind spell at the supply wagon just as it was going over a particularly uneven stretch of road. But the smile Annette gave her was so sweet, and the wagon didn’t even tip over as she had hoped it might, so Cornelia left the confrontation at a suspicious look and snapped at her soldiers to continue the forward march and check the axels on the wagon at the next stop.

Annette wasn’t sure if these things would work. She wasn’t sure if it would actually buy Felix more time, or slow the army’s progression, or even bring morale down that much. She didn’t care. She did it because she wanted to.

The drizzle hadn’t let up when they stopped the march for lunch – if anything, it had fully become rain at this point. Soldiers made for the paltry cover of trees from the edge of the surrounding forest, most of them brushing by Annette without a second glance. Annette, unconcerned, eyed her lunch greedily. She was loathe to admit it, but the cuts of meat they had for their quick lunch were better than most of what she ate while at Garreg Mach, and some of what she had eaten at Dominic in the past few months. The central capital of the Kingdom (Annette stubbornly refused to call it the Dukedom) had more resources than a struggling army or an outpost territory, and doubtless the Empire had provided them supplies for their return home. Cornelia’s troops had to put up with her whims, but they ate well. Annette considered perching on the edge of the supply wagon to finish her meal, in hopes that the soldiers double-checking the wheels would leave soon and she could maybe cause one of the wheels to explode or something. But as she wandered over to the wagon as nonchalantly as possible, she felt long, cold fingers suddenly seize her elbow. She looked up, and Cornelia was standing over her, her lips curled in an unfriendly smile.

“Why don’t you come sit with me, dear? I’m sure it would do us such good to get to know each other, don’t you think?” Cornelia asked, and she was dragging Annette by the elbow and into the forest before Annette had a chance to explain that she was actually done eating, ideally accompanied by shoving the rest of the meat and bread into her mouth in one bite to save her the trouble of having to make further conversation.

While most of the battalion seemed content to sit under the first row of trees lining the road, Cornelia plunged deeper into the forest, dragging Annette behind her. She walked at a punishing pace, despite her elaborate heeled shoes, and Annette stumbled to keep up with her. Slowly, the low conversations of the men disappeared behind them, and then the occasional bursts of laughter, and they could only hear the rain through the trees and the occasional calls of birds as Cornelia continued forward. Annette was seriously beginning to think that this was a bizarre assassination attempt when Cornelia finally found what she was looking for and drew to a halt at the edge of a small forest clearing.

“A perfect place for lunch, don’t you think?” she said, taking a seat on a nearby log. Annette found a stump as far away from the log as she could be without appearing rude, and sat nervously munching on her bread and meat luncheon, waiting for the part where Cornelia struck her dead on the spot or a Demonic Beast appeared in the clearing as part of an indiscernible evil plan.

Cornelia made no move to strike Annette dead on the spot, but instead fixed her with a bemused, pitying gaze. Annette realized that Cornelia was not eating anything, and had not brought any lunch with her into the clearing.

“Don’t you want to join me over here? You’re absolutely ruining your dress, sitting on all that filthy mud. It’s a good thing your fiancé isn’t here to see you right now, you do look an absolute mess,” Cornelia said, her voice as pitying and bemused as her eyes. Annette wanted to object that the traveling clothes she was wearing were designed to withstand a little mud, but Cornelia looked nothing short of resplendent in her traveling dress, and Annette felt extra plain even without admitting that dirt had become a de facto accessory for her when she fought. Annette also thought about pointing out that moving from one rain-soaked log to another wouldn’t greatly improve her chances of looking presentable, but she realized in her same appraising glance that the log Cornelia was sitting on was completely dry. She hadn’t noticed Cornelia casting spells when they entered the clearing, and it seems a silly thing to waste magical reserves on, but Cornelia grinned widely at Annette’s double take, and Annette couldn’t help but feel that somehow, Cornelia had won this round of conversation. If conversation was, in fact, a thing that you could win.

“I’m . . . okay,” Annette replied after a pause. “Over here. I’m fine. One expects to get a little dirt on their clothes while traveling, after all.”

“Does one?” Cornelia asked with a smirk. “I’ll take your word for it. At any rate, no one important is going to see you today, so I guess you don’t have to worry about your appearance right now.”

Annette gave her a tight smile in return and bit into some of her lunch to avoid having to reply. It was some sort of roasted and sliced meat and it was perfectly spiced. Annette tried not to look like she was enjoying herself; she wasn’t sure how Cornelia could turn her love of food into a weakness to exploit but she wasn’t taking any chances.

Cornelia did not feel the same need to hide a look of greediness in her eyes as she leaned forward. “So, Annette,” she said. “Annette Fantine Dominic. Tell me about yourself. I haven’t seen you since you were _such_ a small child.”

Annette swallowed her last bite of food a little too quickly. “Um, what –” she said, interrupting herself with a cough but still not buying herself enough time to come up with anything interesting. “What do you want to know?” she finally asked.

“Why, anything you want to tell me, my dear,” Cornelia said brightly, and it seemed she had moved closer to Annette, log and all, while Annette had been coughing. Annette chalked this up to paranoia. Cornelia continued, “I hardly know anything about you, and I feel we should try to be the _best_ of friends. Fraldarius is poised to be quite a powerful House in the Dukedom, you know. I’m sure we’ll be visiting each other all the time in the years to come.”

“Um,” Annette ventured. “Wow!” Cornelia looked at her expectantly, and Annette realized this probably wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear. “There’s not a ton I can think of to tell you!” Annette babbled on, eager to fill the silence. “I’m just – I’m just little old me, you know?”

Cornelia’s eyes glinted; she tilted her head to the side with an expression of curious disappointment. “Miss Dominic, I know that can’t possibly be true,” she scolded. “But it’s very ladylike of you to be so modest, I suppose. Let’s see. . . why don’t you tell me about your soon-to-be-husband, if you’re so reticent to talk about yourself. What do you think of the newly appointed leader of Fraldarius?”

Annette eyed Cornelia suspiciously. She was well used to fielding questions about Felix – everything from Mercie nudging her in the dining hall to ask if she was staring to the dressmakers asking if her fiancé was handsome to her uncle demanding proprietary information on relationships between the Blue Lions. But Annette was honest, and Cornelia was untrustworthy. It was a combination Annette did not like. It put her, she felt, at an auomatic disadvantage.

Luckily, deflecting her actual feelings about Felix Fraldarius had become something of an art form for Annette in the past year.

“I think,” Annette said, slowly and carefully, “That he’s very strong. House Fraldarius is very powerful. I think Felix is, as well.”

“Not the answer I was expecting from you,” Cornelia said softly. “Not the answer at all. Tell me, then, is that why you agreed to marry him?”

Annette thought about her uncle declaring that she would not leave Dominic, lest the Dukedom think he had Kingdom sympathies in letting her go. She thought about her father, drawn and pale, refusing to look at her as she peered into his cell, dragging herself up on her tiptoes by the barred windows. She thought about Felix pulling her closer towards him and shifting his mouth gently against hers and hurriedly, carefully, wordlessly giving her every promise and assurance of sanctuary that he could give in the face of a dangerous, uncertain future.

“I agreed to marry him,” she replied to Cornelia. “Because he asked me.”

For a brief moment, Cornelia’s lips curled into a sneer, but it turned into her characteristic smirk within a moment. “You’re a very clever girl, you know, has anyone ever told you that?” she asked. “It’s a real shame your uncle was so eager to marry you off so soon. I’m working to reopen the School of Sorcery in Fhirdiad, you know, and this war won’t last much longer, once that murderous prince is out of the way. You could have resumed your studies. I’m quite excited for the new curriculum.”

“That’s . . . that’s nice?” Annette said hesitantly. “I left after only a year, but I think – I think I’ve grown quite a lot in the last few years. I’ll probably be just fine with independent research for now.”

“Perhaps,” Cornelia said. “Tell me about your studies, lamb. I suppose you’ve had all the basics in Reason and Faith, at this point?”

Annette bristled at “basics,” even though she knew she shouldn’t. She had been slated to take a Gremory exam within the next few months before she had been trapped in Dominic. There was nothing basic about her knowledge. Still. It was probably for the best if Cornelia underestimated her.

“The basics of Faith, yes,” she replied, ignoring her impulse to perform, to prove she was good enough. “Reason has always been more of a focus. Wind magic, mostly, for battle situations. I can do a bit of Fire but, um – I’m not allowed to practice fire in close quarters; which makes it difficult to advance.”

That part was true.

She expected another smirk, but Cornelia looked unconcerned with this anecdote. “How interesting,” she said, uninterested. “And Dark Magic? What experience do you have with the Dark Arts, pet?”

Annette winced. She didn’t know many people interested in Dark Magic, and it had held little appeal to her. Lysithea had been naturally good at it, but she was naturally good at everything. Linhardt had dabbled in it, theoretically, but he told her it always seemed like too much work to actually master the spells. And Hubert – well, the less Annette thought about Hubert, the happier she was, in any capacity. Dark magic was a theoretical chasm for Annette. It was different at a fundamental level, just as Faith was. And it freaked her out.

But she didn’t want to tell Cornelia this. Instead, she shook her head as cheerfully as she could, and said, “Well, I was only at the School of Sorcery for a year. That was usually for more advanced students, but I transferred to the Officer’s Academy before I was eligible for any of those courses.”

“You didn’t study it at the academy?” Cornelia asked, frowning. “Surely those monastery cult leaders haven’t completely destroyed the library collection? I wouldn’t put it past them. I suppose all the best tomes were confiscated before you even had a chance to try them.”

“N-no,” Annette stammered, “I mean, maybe. But some people studied Dark Magic. I just – I didn’t have the knack for it, I don’t think. I didn’t really try it.”

“They never thought to test your affinity?” Cornelia asked. “How strange. But then, Hanneman is strangely oblivious to the natural talent of bloodlines, despite his obsession with crests.” She gave Annette a pitying look. “And I suppose,” she added, almost as an afterthought, “A house like Fraldarius will want children who are adept at physical fighting, not mages. A shame. Anyone can learn to swing a sword.”

“I don’t want to learn Dark Magic,” Annette snapped, and she inwardly winced at the petulant whine in her voice. “I’m not interested in it. It has nothing to do with – even if I could learn it, I wouldn’t want to.”

“I see,” Cornelia said slowly. She gave another long, appraising stare, and Annette squirmed uncomfortably under Cornelia’s withering glance. She bit back the urge to apologize, to explain that what she’d said had come out wrong, and Cornelia shouldn’t put much stock into her words because she always messed them up. But before she could launch into such an apology, Cornelia clapped her hands together briskly. “Well then, let’s see what you can do,” she said, gesturing in front of her absently.

Annette blinked in confusion. “What I can do? But I just said –”

“No no, not for Dark Magic. Forget about that for now. Show me your wind magic,” Cornelia cut her off. She gestured to the ground in front of her once more, and then pointed to a tree on the other side of the clearing. “Try to hit that knot in the center of the tree. You see the one I mean? This should be easy for you, but I want to see your form.”

Annette wasn’t sure if she followed Cornelia instructions out of a misplaced longing to appease her or a stubborn, inevitable desire to prove herself worthy or just because she really had no other options. But for whatever reason she was weak, she was weak, and she stood across from the trees with hands that should have shook but didn’t and a stance that left her feeling more grounded than she deserved. She couldn’t do much, but she could hit a stupid tree with a stupid wind spell that she’d learned when she was ten years old.

(Gérald had taught her that incantation, she suddenly remembered. Her mother had been furious he was teaching her offensive magic; up until that point it had been lighting candles and levitating apples. He’d chuckled cheerfully at her mother’s fretting – “Don’t worry, Fantine, she can’t hurt anything with it. Let her have her fun.”)

Annette’s lips barely moved as she whipped through the incantation; she felt energy travel down her arm and through her elbow with a wonderful, exhausting thrill of adrenaline. It felt like she had taken off running after hours of sitting still, or she had come up for air after being trapped beneath endless water. The energy, pure and _right_ and singing through her veins, traveled down her arm and through her wrist and outward, until she flung her arm forward at the last minute, converting energy into movement, into disruption, as a violent gust of air exploded forward in front of her. The wind spell rocketed ahead and slammed into the tree. Branches swayed wildly on impact, causing a showering of water droplets to cascade into the clearing, a downpour of Annette’s own making. When the wind and water had cleared, the tree remained upright, but the knot had inverted, a neat hole now embedded in the tree at the site of impact. Pine sap oozed from the edges of the hole, and Annette felt a brief flash of remorse – target practice was all well and good, but the tree hadn’t done anything to her. She dropped her hand and turned towards Cornelia, stepping back towards the tree as she did so, as if to protect the silent pine from Cornelia’s interference.

“Impressive,” said Cornelia, and to Annette’s surprise she sounded like she meant it. “That’s enough of that, I think, you need to save your strength. I wouldn’t want to return you to your wedding all black and blue.” Annette was pretty sure Cornelia didn’t really care what she looked like at her wedding, or whether she had a wedding at all. She was also pretty sure that routine magic practice was not the biggest threat to her wedding day appearance. She said neither of these things.

Cornelia patted the log next to her. “Sit with me, dear. There’s no need to stay on your feet all day.” Annette hesitantly took a seat on the far end of the log. She still hadn’t ruled out bizarre assassination attempt from the list of Cornelia’s possible motivations for this woodland chat, but she couldn’t think of a way to refuse a direct invitation – or order.

“Tell me, Annette,” Cornelia said as she sat down. “How does Reason magic work?”

Annette blinked at her. It wasn’t the question she was expecting, although it wasn’t an unheard of question, given her studies. Her final exams at the School of Sorcery had contained several questions much to that effect. But she wasn’t at the School of Sorcery, and she couldn’t think of any contributions she could make to the field of theoretical magicks that Cornelia did not already know herself.

Still, she knew the answer. And Annette loved it when she knew the answer.

“There are certain principles in the world that we hold to be true,” she said promptly, too excited by the theory for her answer to be mechanical, even if it was practiced. She reached to the ground and picked up a stone. She tossed it into the air and watched it fall to the ground as she talked. “For example, if I toss a stone into the air, it will surely fall. If I throw a flame into the sea, it will surely die. Reason magic begins when you disrupt the principle.” At this, she tossed another stone into the air, and quickly followed the toss with a small, focused wind spell. The stone hovered above her eyeline for a handful of heartbeats before dropping to the ground once more. Annette continued, “It begins when you disrupt the principle. The project of Reason magic is to follow the illogical disruption until its logical end.”

“Quite the succinct presentation,” Cornelia said. “You should have gone into teaching.” Annette blushed, either because it was a compliment, or because it was not. “And Faith magic, pet? What can you tell me about Faith magic?”

Annette looked at Cornelia suspiciously. She was beginning to wonder what the woman’s agenda was in asking her these questions. Still, while Annette had her own ways of understanding Faith magic, she would prefer to reserve those conversations with someone like Mercie, or Ashe, or even Felix, who had certainly listened to her mumble her way through enough Faith magic tomes, making sleepy and affirming noises as she ranted to him about the incomprehensibility of healing properties at one in the morning. Her friends had various levels of interest in the theoretical backings of Faith and Reason, but at least she could vouch that none of them wanted her dead. That was always a nice starting point in a conversation.

“Faith magic,” Annette said primly, for Cornelia was still looking at her expectantly, “Is the humble and sincere requesting of the goddess to restore order amidst the chaos and to bring the body back to its natural state.”

Cornelia raised her eyebrows at this, and seemed to sigh without sighing. At any rate her disappointment and amusement were palpable in equal measure, and Annette didn’t like either as a response. “Such a pious answer,” she told Annette. “I’m sure your prayers are very beautiful.”

“But I’m not wrong,” Annette said, defensive for no good reason.

Cornelia smiled at this. “Lets talk about the natural order of things,” she said, as if Annette had not spoken. ”Tell me, lamb, what will happen to this fallen tree that we have so brilliantly repurposed for teatime seating?”

Annette felt confused, which she hated, and slightly dumb, which she hated more. “N – nothing will happen to it?” she ventured, and she knew she was wrong as she said it. “It’s already fallen, it will continue to lay here.”

Cornelia smiled to know something that Annette so obviously did not. “Now, now, dear, think harder than that,” she instructed. “What would happen to you, for example, were you to fall on the battlefield tomorrow? Would your body just lay there, as you say?”

Annette grimaced in understanding. “It would decay,” she said. “And so will the tree, of course, although it will take longer. Eventually it will become part of the ground.”

Cornelia reached out her hand towards Annette and Annette instinctively moved away from her. It was a rude gesture, perhaps, but her instincts turned out to be correct. Cornelia did not touch her, but instead placed her hand on the log between them. Before Annette’s eyes, the wood of the log began to weaken, becoming damp and pliable beneath Cornelia’s fingers and spreading out across the sides of the log in wet, crumbling pieces, until the solid wood beneath her hands hand collapsed into a pile of decaying muck on the ground beneath them. They now sat on two separate logs, and Cornelia beamed at Annette.

“Eventually, we all become part of the ground,” she said, savoring Annette’s words as they twisted off her tongue. The breath caught in the back of Annette’s throat; there was something menacing about watching a tree disappear before her eyes, even if the tree had been dead for quite some time at this point. Cornelia smiled as Annette looked up at her, trying to hide how unsettled she felt. “The world is bent towards chaos, my dear. The universe, at its core, desires decay. We are the ones who intercede with that natural flow of time, who cling to stasis and call it healing. My magic gives the universe what it wants. If you want to follow your magic to a conclusion, to an order, you should move beyond Faith and Reason. They are merely bandages on a wound that will not heal.”

Annette forced herself to not look away, or run away, or scream. No one would hear her and there was nowhere to go. The least she could do was hold onto her pride. “That’s certainly. . . an interesting way of thinking about it,” she said slowly, flexing her forearm against Felix’s dagger, to assure her that it was still there. “Perhaps you should have been a teacher, as well.”

“I’d like to think I am, my dear,” Cornelia said. “What do you think this is?”

“Umm,” Annette said in reply, but Cornelia didn’t seem to require articulate encouragement. She reached into her cloak, and Annette flinched, one hand already moving to the dagger at her wrist, but Cornelia simply produced a small spell book, worn and weather-beaten. It was the first thing Annette had seen associated with Cornelia that wasn’t elaborately, decadently beautiful, and maybe that contrast tricked her into leaning forward on her perch when she full well knew Cornelia could offer her nothing that she wanted. Cornelia didn’t notice, or pretended not to notice, Annette’s curiosity, and flipped through the book quickly and efficiently, effortlessly finding the page she wanted. She passed it to Annette with a flourish.

“Try to hit that spot on the tree again, sweetheart,” Cornelia said airily, as Annette squinted at the incantation printed on the page, next to an opposite illustration of a woman who appeared to be writhing in pain. Annette flipped the book over to look at the cover, but it was untitled. She gave a suspicious glance towards Cornelia.

“I’d rather not,” she said. “I’ve always been told you shouldn’t try Dark Magic without careful supervision, especially if you don’t have the knack for it already.”

“Oh but my dear, I think you _do_ have the knack for it,” Cornelia said, her eyes shining intensely, matching the gleam of the rain-soaked leaves as she looked Annette up and down. “And I assure you, I will be supervising. Very carefully. Off you go, now, you’ll want to stand for this.”

Annette looked at the spell once more, mumbling the words to herself, and she suddenly felt overcome by a selfish curiosity. The words were pronounceable, but strange and sharp on her tongue, and she wanted them to seem comprehensible. Cornelia could phrase it however she liked; Annette would always think of magic as a knowable, inevitable conclusion. And it bothered her more deeply than she cared to admit that she couldn’t quite grasp the conclusion of this incantation, which for all intents and purposes appeared to be a simple one. Repeating it to herself, she stood in the center of the clearing once more, took a breath, and flung her hand forward with a sharp crack of her wrist. Dark, purple-tinged light fell appeared from her fingers, and the light traveled forward several feet before evaporating into hazy mist. The spell didn’t seem to make it to the tree, but Annette felt like she could faintly smell an earthy decay as the light dissipated.

Cornelia was on her feet and by Annette’s side before the light was fully gone. “Stronger T’s at the top of the incantation; it should feel like the words are coming from further back in your throat,” she said briskly. She grabbed Annette’s hand and forced her arm to be bent at the elbow once more. “Too much movement in the wrist, as well – that’s common for wind mages, I suppose. It needs to come from your elbow.” She gripped Annette’s wrist tightly one with hand and, her other hand firmly on Annette’s elbow, guided her threw the basic movement of spellcasting several times. Annette tried to pull away, but couldn’t seem to. Cornelia’s hands were unbearably cold, the chill seeping through the fabric off Annette’s sleeve and shocking on her bare wrist. Annette could scarcely hear instructions, but Cornelia soon stepped back and away. “One more time. Remember – this is what the tree wants. Work with the flow of time, not against it.”

Annette did not care for that theory, as a pep talk, but she recentered herself and drew a deep breath. Cornelia looked at her expectantly. Annette tried again, shifting weight onto her left foot as she lunged forward, pushing the light out of her fingertips and towards the trees. The spell was wide off the mark, and buried itself in the tree a good two feet to the left of her target. Still, the spell was viable, and as the purple rays collided with the tree it made a sickening hissing sound. Annette’s eyes widened as she stared at the blackened ring that cut slightly into the tree, thick liquid oozing around the edges where the beam of light had graced the outer bark.

Cornelia was at her elbow again, her icy hand rest in Annette’s shoulder. “I’m not surprised,” she said, her voice low in Annette ear. Her fingers ran across Annette’s neck in a gesture that Annette could only interpret as fondness, as illogical as such an interpretation might seem. “Horrific aim, but on your second try – I’m not surprised at all. Fantine really was always quite the little prodigy, when I knew her.”

A sharp pain at the back of Annette’s hand drew her attention away from Cornelia, and she glanced down at her hand in surprise. Vicious welts traced lines across her hand, drawing roadmaps across bones and veins and knuckles. They looked like stinging nettle marks she would bring home with her from picnics to the river as a child, except they were an unpleasant bluish purple. Annette was well used to the after effects of unmastered magic, but she’d never seen anything like this. Rather than taking her energy or her breath, this pain was targeted and physical. Rather than feeling tired, she somehow felt more energized – as if the only course of action was to cast the spell again; as if conjuring more of that eerie purple light would smooth and soothe the raised skin on her hands.

Annette gave a small yelp and stumbled backwards, away from Cornelia. She clutched her hand and dragged her gaze up to meet the woman, who was looking at her with curiosity rather than concern. “I don’t –” Annette gasped out, and the raised skin on her hand burned as she brushed it with her fingers. “I don’t want to learn this. I won’t use this. I have no use for this.”

Cornelia’s smile was slow and greedy, her eyes were dark, and she looked at Annette hungrily. “Well, of course, you won’t need this tomorrow,” she said, taking the spell book from Annette’s hand and patting it gently. Annette whimpered at the pain; Cornelia’s fingertips felt like frostbite against the lines on her skin. “You should never cast a new spell on the battlefield; I’ve always thought that. And Dimitri will fall to air and fire just as easily, I should imagine.”

“He won’t – I won’t –” Annette babbled, the pain making her responses incoherent and reflexive.

Cornelia ignored her. “Wind spells tomorrow; we’re in agreement. But you must think _long term_ , child.” The raised lines across Annette’s hands were already beginning to subside, although the pain remained, and Annette reverted to the deep, centering breaths she relied on to get her through new Faith magic. Cornelia talked over her measured breathing.

“Once you’ve given him a child with a Crest, Duke Fraldarius won’t have much need of you, I’m sure,” she said, as easily as a simple arithmetic problem. “That will take at most two years. Three years if you’re unlucky. And you’ll find nurses for your children; you needn’t concern yourself with that.” She pulled Annette closer, her fingers icy against the back of her neck, and smiled down at her, and Annette could no longer fully identify the smile as disingenuous. “You have so much potential, and he’ll be so bored of you. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life imprisoned in a castle?”

“Castle Fraldarius is to be my home,” Annete said, and her voice felt small and her words felt naïve. “Felix – Duke Fraldarius – it wouldn’t be a prison, with him.”

Cornelia looked unmoved by such a proclamation. “Perhaps you’re still too young to think long term,” she said softly. “So clever at spells, and yet you know so little. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll think long term for you.” She dropped her hand from the back of Annette’s neck and clasped her hands together, leaning forward to meet Annette at eye level. “And I have _such_ plans for you, Annette dear.”

Annette took a step back and found it did no good. Cornelia was still too close, and still too content, and still far, far too proud of Annette’s work that day. And dagger or no dagger, there was nowhere for Annette to run.

“That’s enough magic for today, I think,” Cornelia said, suddenly brisk and businesslike. She glanced down at the hand that Annette still cradled gingerly against her chest. “We’ll have to get you some gloves, in the future. But for now, I suppose we had best rejoin the others. Come along, dear.”

Cornelia was kind enough to lead Annette out of the woods by her nondominant hand. Her chilled fingers slid against the dagger enough times that Annette was certain she was mocking her.

***

Cornelia faded back into the throng of soldiers as the reached the forest’s edge, leaving Annette slightly out of break from the quick pace and slightly out of focus from their conversation. Her knees were weak as she wobbled her way to where the horses were waiting, and she wasn’t sure if it was the after effects of strange magic or a side effect of anxious adrenaline. She shook her head violently to try to snap herself back in to focus. She would ignore Cornelia’s cryptic comments and backhanded compliments. She would not think about the trees in the clearing turning to sappy pulp. She would plan her next move for slowing the caravan down, and that would be a good distraction. Annette frowned as she looked up at her horse, who snorted at her gracelessly. Maybe she could fall off the horse and pretend to break her ankle. Maybe she could fall of the horse and _really_ break her ankle. Maybe she could fall of the horse, and when Cornelia came to check on her, she could kick her in the ankle.

Before she had time to settle on any of these ideas, she felt ice seeping through her shoulder, and she flinched as she looked up at Cornelia, who had appeared as quickly as she disappeared.

“I’ve been thinking, dear, about our ride this morning, and it did seem you were out of sorts the entire journey,” Cornelia cooed in her ear. Annette twisted to get out of her grip, and took a step back. “Is the ride too tiring for you? Or perhaps disaster just follows you everywhere?”

“I – wow – that’s so nice of you to check,” Annette said, taking another step backwards. Cornelia matched her step for step. “I’m doing fine! Absolutely fine. Love horses. Great day for a ride.”

Thunder rolled in the distance faintly. Cornelia smiled unsympathetically. Annette took another step and realized that Cornelia had backed up her against the supply wagon, which had been stationed near the horses. She tried to lean casually against the back of the wagon. She felt neither casual nor intimidating; she would have to ask Felix for tips on casually leaning against things the next time she saw him.

“You put on such a _brave_ face, darling. But you won’t fool me,” she said, a trace of menace at the edge of her smile. “I feel awful making you waste your break showing me some silly spells. Those can be so exhausting for a novice mage.”

“I feel fine,” Annette said, as cheerfully as she could.

“So brave,” Cornelia replied. “But you needn’t be. Let’s put you in the supply wagon for the rest of the trip, hmm?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Annette asked, but she realized that nearby soldiers were already untying the back flaps of the wagon and pulling them back. The inside was cramped and dark, loaded with weapons and supplies and decidedly not designed for travel. One of the soldiers – Annette realized it was the one who had asked her about Dimitri earlier – lifted Annette up roughly into the wagon, setting her down hard on the wooden wagon floor.

Cornelia smiled at Annette, placing a hand on her shoulder to keep the girl from standing up. “I’m just worried about you; you’re such a delicate thing and travel can be so harsh,” she told Annette with little concern in her voice. “Things will be much safer this way, I think.”

“I don’t – I can’t –” Annette protested, and Cornelia gave her an amused smirk in reply. Finally Annette burst out, “What if you’re attacked on the road? I can’t help you if I’m stuck in here!”

“My dear, I think you’ve done _quite_ enough for our little army today,” Cornelia said sweetly. “Save your strength for tomorrow; you’ll need it.”

She gave Annette a hard shove to the shoulder, knocking her off balance and onto her back. Annette pulled herself up onto her elbows in time to see Cornelia slamming the canvas of the supply wagon shut, effectively blocking Annette in. Annette could have sworn she was grinning at her before the wagon plunged into a dark, damp, rickety haze.

Annette had barely gotten herself back into a crouching position when the wagon pitched forward as the troops began their march. She fell into a stack of spare lances and turned her curse into a prayer of thanks that she’s landed on the dull ends, not the sharp ones. Annette was not actually a particularly pious woman, but she didn’t need to be on the goddess’s bad side this week.

It took her the better part of an hour to grow acclimated to the sway of the wagon, and some time after that to find a spot of approximate comfort in the dark, claustrophobic space. She finally settled for propping herself up against a bag of grain – it seemed like they were having some sort of porridge for dinner that night – and resting her feet on box of vulneraries. Annette absently stared at the pattern of the wooden planks beneath her. She drew her fingers down the lines of the wood, wondering which of her friends were traveling from Derdriu at the moment, and what they would do if they saw her tomorrow. Her fingers stopped at a circle in the pattern of the wood that looked uncomfortably like the knot in the tree that she had aimed at so carefully, and obliterated so thoroughly, hours before.

Annette tapped the circle of wood absently, remembering the feelings of power and pain that had surged through her after she had cast that second spell. The incantation for it was still stuck in her head, swirling around with a musicality that had too many consonants but that she couldn’t quite escape. Annette knit her eyebrows together and tapped the circle a little less absently. Finally, she placed her index finger in the center of the circle, took a deep breath for courage, and muttered the incantation to herself. Annette’s eyes grew wide as the wood beneath her fingers seemed to morph and change; her finger felt trapped to the spot as the circle crumbled away, turning soft and spongy beneath her fingertip before dissolving away and dropping to the ground below. Annette yanked her hand away and stared at the hole in the floor of the supply wagon. Grey light cast a strange, inverted shadow over her face as she looked down, seeing the ground move beneath her at a steady clip.

Annette ignored the pain throbbing at her knuckles and she gave a yelp of victory. Cornelia made a big production of it in the clearing, but that was all theatrics. It wasn’t such a hard spell to adapt, in the end. Annette’s victory was quickly silenced by the reminder that there was not a practical application of this spell for the current situation. She doubted she’d be able to cast anything at Cornelia and she had no intention of casting anything at Dimitri. Unless she planned to dissolve the entirety of the supply wagon floor (and her aching knuckles warned this plan would probably have painful side effects), she doubted that the boxes of vulneraries or bags of grain would be particularly impressed with her.

Unless.

Annette whipped around and looked at the grain bag that she’d been leaning against. It was large, and could probably feed the army for tonight and tomorrow, at least. Annette smiled to herself with a wickedness that Cornelia would probably envy, were she there to see it. She reached into her sleeve and pulled out the dagger. She couldn’t stab Cornelia through the heart, as she wanted, so she would aim for her stomach.

Your heart was close to your stomach, after all.

Annette plunged the dagger into bag, giving it a violent twist as she pulled it back out. Grain immediately began spilling out of the bag, and Annette nudged it with her foot until it was falling over the newly decayed plank, dropping through to the ground below at an even, steady rate. The grain would mix with the mud and the dirt below, swallowed up by horse hooves and raindrops rather than leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. Annette didn’t mind. She didn’t need anyone to see what she was doing; in fact, it was better if they didn’t.

Annette resumed her resting position, her feet propped up on the box, her head resting on the slowly depleting pillow that was the sack of grain. She closed her eyes and decided she’d try to get a few hours of sleep before not having dinner tonight.

Her imprisonment at Dominic had been one of modest teatimes and three course dinners. She was more than ready to go hungry for her Kingdom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why do people tune in to chapter 13 of a super shippy slowburn fic? Is it because they want to read 3000 words on magic theory? I think that's it. I think that's why.
> 
> Also, side note, if anyone out there is thinking about writing Cornelia as a villain in their stuff, can I just _strongly_ encourage you to do that? Seriously, she's such a fun antagonist. She's the worst person I've ever met; I want to travel the world with her.
> 
> I hope everyone is staying safe and well out there! If you're a front line worker, I am sending you all my love and will write you anything you want forever. If you are staying in your house and starting to go stir crazy, I hope this made things a little less stir crazy. (There is no woman in the wallpaper. Stop trying to let the woman out of the wallpaper.) I'm thinking the every-other-week thing is going to be a pretty decent update schedule for me right now, but I'll keep you posted if that changes at all.
> 
> Okay, love to you all, my dearest darlings! Take care of yourself! [ Come say hi to me on twitter.](https://twitter.com/Rose3Writes) Wash your hands! Drink some water! I'll see you in a couple of weeks.


	14. Felix Fights His Shadow

Felix made his way through the forest quickly and quietly. He had trained from a young age to move silently; even through uncertain terrain, even under the cover of darkness. Especially under the cover of a darkness. The moon was waning, casting only a sliver of light through the branches, but the skies in eastern Fódlan were thankfully clear that evening. If Felix had gone for that sort of thing, he might have said the goddess was smiling down at him, for once in his life.

It was strange to think that he had been in Dominic that morning. He had not slept since Annette left him in the grey light of a rainy dawn, her kiss and her voice still reverberating through him. He had told Gérald that urgent business required that he travel back to Fraldarius territory for the next two days, and technically, he had been telling the truth. Traveling by horseback unaccompanied, he had reached the Fraldarius Castle by mid-afternoon. Matthew had been distraught (or, as distraught as Matthew could get, which was a vague frown and a single raised eyebrow) by Felix’s unwillingness to stay an extra hour to go over the most important paperwork of the past month. Felix promised him two hours upon his return, in exchange for a fresh horse and a trusted group of soldiers to join him. Matthew had haggled up for three hours and not asked questions, and Felix was on the road once more with less than an afternoon spent in his home territory.

It was well past nightfall when Felix and his men turned south, away from the northern coast that had guided their route, and began to trace an army’s route from Derdriu to Garreg Mach. Nighttime conditions were not ideal for traveling by horseback, but proved a boon for locating Dimitri’s base camp – Felix saw the fires from a good distance away. Either this was the camp he sought, or he would have to resume his search in the morning. Felix left his men behind, asking them to continue their march along the mountains as a pantomime of a guard’s patrol, to get some sleep if they could find a safe spot to make camp, and to meet him in the same location at dawn. He continued toward the campfire smoke on foot, eventually slipping into the trees that lined the road as he angled himself towards the rows of tents and fires and wagons that were the hallmarks of a traveling army.

Felix picked his way through the forest easily. Between the heavily wooded areas surrounding his family’s castle and the countless night watches around the Sealed Forest, he had plenty of experience navigating the woods after dark. And monsters were thankfully scarce tonight, perhaps frightened off by the very voices and fires that drew Felix in.

He stopped at the edge of the woods, looking at the rows of tents that lined the border of the camp. He couldn’t just walk into the camp and ask to speak with Dimitri. Only a handful of officers in the rebel army were aware of his mission. Grondor Field had taught them all too well that even a child could plot murder, and there had been too many leaked secrets and too many infiltrators to ever feel like Garreg Mach was impenetrable. Felix was familiar with the setup of their traveling camp – Dimitri’s tent would be at the center of the encampment, but there was possibly a larger meeting tent where they held ad hoc war councils. That tent was generally kept on the outskirts of the camp, for no one slept there, open to assassination, and an out of the way location was preferable for private meetings. Felix threaded his way through the treeline until he came to the corner of camp, and spotted what he was looking for – a slightly larger but otherwise inconspicuous tent tucked away from prying ears.

Felix was about to creep forward to try to get a sense if anyone was in the tent at this late an hour when movement grabbed his attention. The tent flaps opened outward, and Dimitri and Byleth walked out into the night. It was Felix’s perfect opportunity to dart forward and pull them back into the tent, but he found himself frozen behind the tree. At first, watching Byleth bid Dimitri goodnight and disappear deeper into encampment, Felix told himself he needed to be cautious, that he didn’t know who was still remaining in the meeting tent. But Felix blinked at the prince, who was staring up at the sky, seemingly transfixed by the stars, and remembered the last time they’d spoken one-on-one with horrific clarity.

Byleth hadn’t had to work hard to spread rumors about Felix leaving the army. Felix had no doubt that before the day was over, the entire monastery had been aware of the screaming match that had taken place between the prince of Faerghus and his right-hand man. Hushed whispers had followed Felix through the few days he’d remained at Garreg Mach, eyes trailing down to his injured arm as merchants spoke to him and a hesitant reply every time he asked a question of soldier or priestess. Staring at his former friend and current liege as he silently numbered the stars above him in quiet contemplation, Felix’s breath hitched. He didn’t want to face his former friend, but it didn’t matter what he wanted. He lived for more than himself or his past. His hand went unconsciously to his sword as he took a step towards Dimitri, who was already turning to walk away into the camp.

Felix felt the knife against his ribcage before anything else. He froze. Dimitri faded into the rows of tents and rising campfire smoke. Felix’s sword was halfway drawn when a familiar voice murmured in his ear.

“I’m not surprised to see you’re back here, Fraldarius, but I am surprised that you were caught so easily.”

Felix counted to four silently in his head – opponents always expected an immediate reaction, and for all of his flaws, Felix knew the value of patience. On the fourth count, he brought he elbow backwards to violently collide with his attacker, stomping on their foot with equal force. There was a strangled grunt of surprise, and blessed space between Felix and the knife. Felix acted quickly, twisting the wrist of his assailant until the knife fell to the dirt below and kicking the knife away before it even properly settled. The figure was only momentarily distracted, however, and Felix had to throw his hands up to block the uppercut that immediately followed. Felix swatted the incoming fist aside and followed with his own punch, making brutal, accurate contact with cheek and nose. His opponent stumbled back, momentarily stunned, giving Felix ample time to run. But Felix ran forward instead, preparing another punch almost instinctively.

He knew better than to turn his back on the Leader of the Alliance. And he  _ definitely _ knew better than to put significant distance between himself and the academy’s most accurate marksman.

Claude blocked two punches in quick succession, levied a left hook of his own, and stumbled back as he dodged another follow-up from Felix. He pivoted to the side to avoid tripping into a tree, and Felix whirled with him to face him head on. Felix debated drawing his sword – Claude couldn’t pull his bow at close quarters like this, and he didn’t appear to have another dagger to reach for. But he couldn’t imagine Claude surrendering, and a fight to the death with the Kingdom’s newest ally would probably lose him any points he might have gained from trying to rescue their most competent mage. Especially as, thus far, he had not been particularly successful at rescuing their most competent mage.

Fists it was.

Or, more than fists, as Claude bent his knee and leveraged a swift kick into Felix’s abdomen before he could throw yet another punch. Felix struggled not to double over, the breath knocked out of him, and barely dodged as Claude’s elbow as the man leapt towards him.

“Claude – let me talk to –” Felix gasped out, but he was quickly cut off by another flurry of fists. He knocked each punch to the side with practiced efficiency and struck at Claude’s ribs, knocked the man off balance. Claude stumbled to the right and looked up at Felix, and Felix was shocked to realize that he was  _ smiling _ , a dark, sardonic grin that had only developed from his cocky teenage smirks whenever he got a bullseye on the training grounds.

“Yeah, talking was never your strong suit, Fraldarius,” Claude said, his voice slightly hitching between unstressed syllables. “You were always best as a fighter; not sure diplomatic treachery is working for you.”

Felix opened his mouth to ask Claude something, he wasn’t sure what – How much did he know? How had he heard it? Was this his way of calling a truce? Was this what Dimitri had told him?

Claude shut his mouth before he could ask, the uppercut finally making contact.

Felix half-stumbled, half-fell backwards with more practiced grace than he appeared to have in the moment. He’d taken enough punches to know how to absorb them, but spots still flashed in front of his eyes, bright patches of light in contrast to the dark haze of the forest. He shook his head clear and charged forward. Claude had always been strong, and quick, but his stamina flagged in extended engaged combat. If Felix could just tire him out, he might be able to get a word in edgewise.

Claude dodged his attack and leapt to the right again, and Felix matched the pivot. It was a rhythm at this point, a dance that he had almost forgotten the tune to, in his years on the battlefield and away from the controlled spars of a military academy. It was rare that Felix faced someone who could last him more than a couple of rounds. The practiced pacing of an equal opponent was almost a welcome return.

Claude darted forward, reaching behind him, and Felix blinked in surprise. It was an odd time to pull out a secondary knife, but Claude von Riegan never fought without a trick up his sleeve. Quickly and intently looking his former classmate up and down in the half-seconds leading up to his attack, Felix frowned as he took a step back, bracing for a block or dodge, depending on Claude’s plan. He shifted weight onto his right foot and pivoted backwards –

– and slammed straight into the tree that Claude had lured him against.

Claude drew his arm forward, and he was not holding another knife, but the bow that he kept strapped to his back for a night watchman’s shift. Grasping either end, he pushed the bow up against Felix’s neck, trapping him against the tree and practically cutting off his air supply.

“Killing you seems a shame,” he said, his eyes glinting with the mocking amusement that he carried with him into the bleakest battles when he was a teenager. “Mostly because you were such a nice guy at the officer’s academy, but also because you’ve probably got lot of secrets in the head of yours. You’ve been siding with the Empire for, what, two months now?”

Felix struggled against the bow, but Claude kept it fast against his throat, pushing just hard enough that it  _ could _ become dangerous. “Claude,” Felix choked out, and the word sounded like nothing. “I need to –” he kicked a foot out uselessly, pushing against the bow to no avail.

Claude pressed harder, until Felix stopped pushing back. “I’m surprised his princeliness hasn’t had more assassination attempts, to be honest,” he said, almost to himself, his eyes not seeming to see Felix for a moment. “It’s like he either trusts no one or everyone. How he’s gone this far without a dagger to his back is beyond me.” His eyes, sharp and dark and skeptical, refocused on Felix. “Who put you up to it, then?”

Felix kicked again and made no contact. He struggled to regain his footing, gasping for air.

“You’ve been courting Baron Dominic’s niece, no?” Claude continued. “My spies have had you in Western Faerghus for weeks now. Is the prince’s head some sort of dowry, Fraldarious? I wouldn’t have thought it of Annette. Although,” he added, tilting his head to the side. “Maybe she has it in her. She sang the creepiest songs back in school; she was certainly full of surprises.”

Felix was, on the whole, bad at hiding his emotions. He was worse at ignoring them or downplaying them. But he’d become very adept at channeling emotion in the past decade. He channeled all of his emotions now – anger that Claude had heard Annette’s songs, confusion that he hadn’t liked them, annoyance at the way his eyes seemed to smirk even when his mouth was a frown, fear that he’d never draw a clear breath again –into the central line of the bow against him, and pushed down with as much force as had in him. The bow gave away by millimeters. Felix took them.

“Dimtri,” he gasped out, his voice hoarse and strangled. “I need to talk to Dimitri.”

For a brief moment, Claude’s eyebrows raised in surprise. Felix tested this fraction of uncertainty, quickly shifting his grip on the bow and trying to wrench it to the side, twisting it out of Claude’s grasp. Claude’s face immediately became a mask of suspicion once more, and he easily matched the push and redirected the bow backwards, pushing Felix back again, the pressure truly dangerous this time. 

“So after six years you finally learn his name,” he muttered to himself. “Or learn how to use it.”

Felix considered leveling another punch at him. If he was going to pass out, the least he could do was give Claude a matching set of black eyes rather than just one. His vision swam in front of him, and it seemed as if there were two Claudes, and four eyes, that he’d have to contend with. He felt up to the challenge.

Claude, however, pulled away slightly for a second time, and air filled Felix’s lungs in a way he had never quite appreciated. “Hands where I can see them,” he snapped tersely. Felix put his hands on either side of the bow and raised an eyebrow at Claude, daring him to be more specific. Claude shot him a glare, but he was already reaching for Felix’s side, keeping the bow balanced with one hand. With one quick motion he unsheathed Felix’s sword and cast it carelessly into the woods behind him. Felix suppressed a wince – he really liked that sword.

“You can talk to Dimitri,” Claude said. “But you’ll meet him on my terms.”

He stepped back and Felix could breathe again. For now, that would have to be good enough.

***

The war council tent could only fit a handful of people at a time, nothing like the full retinue of officers that joined at Garreg Mach. It was surprisingly well-stocked, given that it was meant for travel. There was a small central table, a trio of chairs, and a trunk that contained maps and ledgers and others accoutrements of strategy. Tonight, several maps lay scattered across the top of the trunk, hastily thrown down after some meeting or another. Felix had hoped the army had gotten more organized and mobile in his absence, that they had found a replacement for Gilbert’s methodical and tactical mind. They certainly hadn’t gotten neater.

Felix was well-used to the space. He had little love for strategy and less love for discussion, but during the first few months following the millennium festival, he hardly trusted Dimitri to walk down a hallway unsupervised, let alone devise a battle that didn’t leave half the troops lying dead on a field for “being weak and worthless” or other such horrifying proclamations. It was ironic that Felix was seated at his former spot at the foot of the meeting table; Claude had certainly picked the seating arrangement at random. He’d dispatched a messenger to find Dimtri and send him to the tent as soon as possible. Claude now sat in a chair by the doorway, eyeing Felix suspiciously. Felix was sure he would have little luck at an escape attempt even if he wanted one, with his favorite sword lying in the woods somewhere and his hands bound tightly together. But he had nowhere to run, and for once, that was an optimistic thought.

“I don’t suppose you want to tell me  _ why _ you want to speak to Dimitri,” Claude said lazily, sounding as if he didn’t particularly care what the answer was. “Or why you’re here at all? I know that would mess with the whole silent moody thing you’ve got going on, but I’ll find out either way.”

Felix glared at him. “If your information network is so impressive,” he said darkly, “I’m not sure why you’re bothering to ask questions.”

Claude raised an eyebrow. “Information network? Aren’t you dramatic,” he said. “I mean, it  _ is _ impressive. But that’s not what I mean. Dimitri will just tell me.”

“You tried to shoot an arrow through his heart not three moons ago,” Felix pointed out.

“He started it,” Claude said with a shrug. “How’s Dominic these days? I hear they have marvelous sunsets out that way.”

“Haven’t really noticed,” Felix said. “I’ve had actual work to do.”

“Other things on your mind?” Claude asked with a smirk. “Or stuck in your head?”

Felix opened his mouth to snap that Claude surely had better things to do than speak in riddles and ask for travel recommendations, but he was interrupted as the tent flaps burst open with unnecessary force, flapping violently against the inside of the tent – a telltale sign of someone who didn’t know their own strength. 

“Claude? You wanted to see – Felix! By the goddess!”

Dimitri Blaiddyd’s hulking form appeared in the doorway of the meeting tent. It was surely the most spacious tent on the campgrounds, but it was still too low of a ceiling for him to stand properly. If Felix had worried that Dimitri would be unhappy to see him, those anxieties were long behind him. For one thing, there was something about getting into a fistfight and taken prisoner in your own army that put anxieties into perspective, and Felix felt loaded with perspective at the moment. For another, Dimitri strode over to Felix’s chair with desperate relief written across his features, wrapping Felix in a hug so tight that he could hardly breath. It was only when he pulled away that he seemed to take in Felix’s blackened eye, bloody lip, and bound hands.

__

“Sothis above, Felix! What happened to you?” Dimitri asked with great concern. He quickly reached for a knife at his belt and Claude made no move to stop him as he cut Felix’s hands free.

__

“A double agent, then?” Claude mused, adjusting to the new information as easily as if he’d devised the plot himself. “You might have told me, Dimitri. You would have saved us both quite a few bruises.”

Dimitri wheeled towards him, shock on his face as he took in Claude, who had not fared much better. “I’m so sorry, my friend, I didn’t think to – Felix has been working as a spy against the Empire for quite some time now. Two of our army’s finest officers are trapped in Dominic,” he explained, and Felix almost forgave him, for far more than he should have, to hear him speak so highly of Annette. Dimitri strode forward to where Claude was seated and raised his hand to the cuts and bruises along his jawline. “Do you need a healer? I can send for one immediately. For you, too, Felix,” he added, turning back suddenly towards Felix’s glowering. Felix could swear he blushed as he dropped his hand.

__

Claude sighed, “No, Dimitri, I don’t. Don’t waste their resources, they’ve had a hard enough week,” he said, catching Dimitri’s hand before it could fall too far. He fixed Felix with a steely, curious stare. “I’m more interested why your spy has returned without your two best officers – and why I found him following you in the woods with a sword in one hand.”

__

“I always have a sword in one hand,” Felix said flatly, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms, a gesture of disdain he had sorely missed in the last hour. “Stop making it sound suspicious.”

“No, he’s right Claude, it would be more concerning if he was unarmed,” Dimitri confirmed. “But where  _ is _ Annette? And Gilbert, of course.” He glanced around the tent as if they might have been hiding in the corners, then his eyes flicked to Felix’s ringless fingers, neatly tucked against his arms. “Have you married her yet? Surely you didn’t leave her at Castle Fraldarius.”

__

“Obviously she’s not in Castle Fraldarious,” Felix said, annoyed. “If I’d managed to get her out of Dominc, do you not think that I’d – why would I leave her in Fraldarius?”

“I mean. I don’t know,” Dimitri said, his cheeks turning pink. “Maybe she was taking care of territory related business? Annette’s remarkably competent, you know. She’ll probably be able to put your affairs in order in half the time.”

Felix narrowed his eyes. “I’m not marrying her to put my affairs in – I’m not  _ actually _ marrying her at all. She’s coming back to the army. What are you talking about?”

Dimitri blushed and ducked his head away. “I just think she’d be a good Duchess,” he muttered. Felix tried his best at a disapproving glare, which was somewhat undercut by how his own cheeks were burning. But it seemed to do the trick, as Dimitri took a seat at the table and changed the subject quickly. “So if you still – if you still have business in Dominic, what brings you here? In the dead of night, at that! I confess I’m shocked to see you.”

__

“I’ve got information about enemy forces that couldn’t wait,” Felix said, swinging his chair around so that he was facing the table and Dimitri. He shot a glace at Claude, still leaning in his chair against the wall of the tent. “Proprietary information,” he added bluntly.

__

“That’s my favorite kind of information,” Claude said with a smile.

__

Felix swiveled to give Dimitri a look that he preferred to think of angry rather than pleading, but the prince just looked confused, and slightly hurt. “Felix, I’d trust Claude with my life,” he said solemnly. Felix scoffed, but Claude was already pulling his chair up to the table, clearly taking this as an invitation.

__

“Fine,” Felix grumbled, ignoring the sly smile Claude gave him in return. He directed his attention at Dimitri. “Cornelia knows of reports out of Derdriu. Even now, she marches east with a battalion of elite soldiers. She plans an ambush; I do not know the time or place.”

Dimitri’s face turned solemn, and he nodded, absorbing the information with all the skill of a trained tactician. “How many men?”

“Her private battalion; small in number but prized in skill,” Felix responded. “At least equal to this strike force; perhaps a bit less if you factor in Alliance forces – who travels with you?” he asked Claude.

__

“Just Hilda,” Claude confessed. “I left my remaining troops to see to the restoration of Derdriu.”

Felix winced. “An equal force to yours, then, and she’s banking on surprise,” he said. He looked at the table and grimaced. “Annette travels with her,” he added softly. “Not of her own volition.”

__

“I’m sorry, Felix,” Dimtir replied, his voice quiet. “But if you come to warn us, the odds will be in our favor.”

“I didn’t come to warn you of an ambush so you could face it full on,” Felix interrupted before Dimitri could continue. He pushed aside mental images of Annette on a battlefield against Claude’s bow and Dimitri’s lance. “I came to tell you to redirect. Cornelia leaves Fhirdiad undefended, boar. Go claim your crown.”

Dimitri stared at him in shock, slower to accept this plan than Annette had been. Felix wondered for a heartstopping moment if the plan was actually quite bad. But when Dimitri spoke, his voice was low and urgent.

“We’ll need more troops if we’re going to march on Fhridiad,” he said quickly, adapting to Felix’s plan and elaborating. “But if our route is cut off to Garreg Mach, I don’t know how –”

__

“I’ll go,” Claude cut him off, leaning forward eagerly. “I’ll travel through Goneril – Holst will be eager to see Hilda, and will surely give us safe passage and fresh supplies. If Hilda and Teach come with me, we can organize forces and march to meet you within a week’s time. Hilda’s better at logistics than she lets on; if I keep an eye on her I might be able to get her to do some work for once.”

__

“Your wyverns certainly will travel faster than our army,” Dimitri agreed. He frowned. “But where are we to stay in the interim? We can’t camp out safely in Faerghus territory, we’ll surely be overtaken.”

“Is Ingrid traveling with you now?” Felix said. Dimitri nodded. “Make for Galatea. Or Gautier if you have to. One of the Northern territories that remains loyal to the Crown.” Felix frowned. “I will not return from Dominic until I can guarantee Annette’s safety, but once we are free, I promise you all the force of House Fraldarius.” He frowned, and added, “But until I can offer that, I’m afraid I’ve given you all the information I can.”

__

Dimitri reached over and clasped his hand warmly. It was all Felix could do to not slap it away. “You have given us more than enough, Felix,” he said. “If your father were here –”

__

“Well, he’s not,” Felix said, finally snatched his hand away and leaning back as far from Dimitri as possible. “So there’s no reason to bring him up.”

__

Dimitri, sensibly, redirected conversation. “Are you camping with us tonight? You must be, it’s already so late,” he said. He glanced over his shoulder towards the camp as if he was already making plans for exactly where to place an additional tent. “I must tell Sylvain and Ingrid that you’re here. Mercedes might be asleep; medical treatment following last week’s battle has been nonstop. But perhaps, if you’d like me to wake her –”

__

“Leave her be, this isn’t a social call,” Felix snapped. “People shouldn’t know I’m here, fool. I’ve said what I meant to, I’ll take my leave.”

Dimitri had the nerve to look hurt by this. Felix called him a boar, but he’d forgotten, in the last five years, how often Dimitri could look like a kicked puppy when his plans went awry.

__

“Ingrid and Sylvain are already in your confidence, my friend,” he said. “Surely you can trust –”

__

“Yeah, sure, I trust Ingrid with my life,” Felix said, and his tone was mocking repetition but he meant it. “I don’t trust  _ you _ to find them without making a scene.”

“I assure you I’ll act with the utmost secrecy!” Dimitri promised.

Felix scoffed. “Like the time I told you I thought Ingrid’s new haircut was ‘scary’ and you told her not five minutes later?”

“I was  _ seven years old _ ,” Dimitri protested, and while Felix did not think this was a good excuse, Claude was now rising to his feet and stretching his hands out towards each of them in a conciliatory gesture.

__

“Gentlemen, lower you voices,” Claude said, casting a kindly warning glance at Dimitri and a less kindly warning glance at Felix. “I’ll go find Sylvain and Ingrid; subterfuge suits me and I’m sure you two have so much to catch up on.” He swung his bow over his shoulder easily and looked over at Dimitri. “Don’t let your guard down; he’s got at least three daggers on him that he doesn’t think I know about,” he said, jerking his head towards Felix. Felix glowered in response, but Claude was gone before either could protest.

__

Felix leaned back in his chair and glared at Dimitri, who seemed to suddenly find eye contact very difficult. It had been a long while since they’d been alone in a room together. Byleth had ensured they stayed more or less apart in the days leading up to Felix’s departure from their army.

__

“So,” Felix said finally. “Rescue mission to Derdriu, huh?”

__

“So you’ve heard,” Dimitri said. He leaned forward in awkward but anxious conversation. “You’ve been so silent since you sent Sylvain news of your engagement – I wasn’t sure how quickly word would spread.”

“Dominic has eyes and ears across Fódlan, same as everybody else,” Felix said brusquely. “The Empire’s not pleased that you’re working with the Alliance now. Cornelia wouldn’t be risking an ambush if you didn’t have them running scared.” Dimitri looked up with a ghost of a smile on his face, and Felix scowled back at him. He hadn’t meant it as a compliment. It was just true.

__

“We’ve been struggling to mount an attack on Fhridiad without – well, our army hasn’t been . . . whole. Since Grondor. And after.” Dimitri spoke in insinuations, and while such ambiguities would doubtless make him an excellent diplomat someday, Felix suspected it was more shame than tact that kept him from naming Gilbert, or Annette, or Felix’s father, or even Felix himself. Dimitri pressed on in response to Felix’s raised eyebrow. “We received a distress call from Claude; Empire troops had him cornered at Derdriu. Casualties were grave. Nothing compared to Grondor, but – I fear the Alliance troops would not have survived if we had not arrived when we did.”

__

“How fortunate for Claude that you were able to mobilize the army so quickly,” Felix said flatly.

__

“Felix,” Dimitri said, a warning protest in the name.

__

“No, really, must be nice,” Felix snapped. “Last month you were so caught up in your charge against Enbarr that you couldn’t even dispatch a battalion to rescue two of your chief officers, but I’m glad we’ve come to a place where we’re just dropping everything and rushing out to help Claude von Riegan, of all people.”

__

“It’s more complicated than that and you know it,” Dimitri said, growing defensive for the first time that evening.

__

“Is it?” Felix growled, angry and low. “Annette would die for you, you know that, Dimitri? She’d do anything for you. And when she needed you, you sent her  _ nothing _ .”

__

“I sent her everything. I sent you,” Dimitri said, and his defensiveness was gone, and he looked so defeated. “I’ve made so many mistakes, Felix. And keeping this army together without you – we’re barely holding on. But it wasn't a mistake, sending you to Dominic.”

__

“Sending me to Dominic has just been one mistake after another; you just haven’t had to see them,” Felix replied. “I wanted an  _ army _ , Dimitri. She deserves an army.”

__

“I know what you wanted, friend,” Dimitri said softly. “But to lead our troops across enemy lines, with no reconnaissance or confirmation she was even there –”

__

“We’ve been over this. I haven’t forgotten,” Felix cut him off. They were talking in circles. Felix slammed a hand on the table in frustration and rested his forehead against his other palm. “It hasn’t been enough. I – I haven’t been enough,” he muttered. He wasn’t confessing to Dimitri; he was confessing to an empty room and Dimitri happened to be there. Felix took scarce comfort in the difference.

__

They sat like that for a long time, and Felix wondered if he should try to pick another argument just to avoid sitting with his own thoughts for too long. But eventually, Dimitri spoke again.

__

“I’m sorry I wasn’t the leader you wanted,” Dimitri said, and he sounded like he meant the apology sincerely, which hurt more. “I know I haven’t been . . . much of a king.”

Felix stared at the floor, finding the flickering shadows of a tent lit by candlelight suddenly very interesting. “Take back Fhridiad,” he said quietly. “And maybe you will be.”

__

He looked up into the following silence, and Dimitri was staring at him as if he might disappear if he looked away too soon. Finally, he spoke. “Sometimes,” he said, his voice raspy and torn. “When I thought I saw Glenn, and he looked so disappointed, I couldn’t remember anymore. If it was Glenn, or if it was –”

__

“Don’t,” said Felix. He didn’t need this conversation. Not tonight.

“All I could remember was the disappointment. I’ve failed so many people.”

“Always stuck in the past,” Felix muttered, looking away again. “Always watching graves. I would’ve be here if I –”

__

“Felix! Do my eyes deceive me?” Sylvain was through the tent and across the room before Felix could properly shush him. He clasped Felix’s shoulder cheerfully. “I thought maybe Annette rejected your courtship idea so hard that you died.”

__

Felix shook Sylvain off. “I sent you two separate letters updating you on my upcoming wedding plans,” he said sullenly. “At great personal risk, I might add.”

__

Sylvain shrugged. “Could’ve been a ghost. Maybe you were just lying to save face. Where’s Annie now? Don't tell me she’s already left you,” he said.

__

“Ignore him, Felix,” Ingrid said, pushed Sylvain out of the way to get a better look at Felix, who was still slouched in a chair at the table. She did not offer a hug. He was grateful. “Your sparse updates out of Dominic were appreciated. Would that we could have returned the favor.”

__

“I wasn’t worried,” Felix said, crossing his arms and looking away from Ingrid. “You’re too smart to get yourself killed, I know that.”

__

“Aww, thanks, buddy,” said Sylvain, taking Claude’s former seat, next to Dimitri, who was staring at the table silently amidst the chaos their two friends always brought.

“I was talking about Ingrid,” Felix snapped. “Some nights I couldn’t sleep for all the ways I figured you’d manage to mess things up without me around.”

__

“Awwwww, thanks, buddy,” Sylvain said again, grinning as if this were another class reunion. There were only three chairs around the table, and Sylvain grabbed Ingrid by the elbow and tugged her into his lap. She gave an indignant cry and smacked at his arms, but didn’t move to get up. Felix tried to remember if this was new behavior.

__

“Claude says you brought intel on Empire movements,” Ingrid said, leaning forwardwith as much professionalism as she could manage. Sylvain played idly with the ends of her hair as she spoke. “We’re not returning to Garreg Mach?”

“Cornelia has prepared an ambush. We need to reroute. We change course tomorrow,” Dimitri finally spoke, and Felix looked up in shock at how calm and authoritative his voice was now. This was also new behavior. “We make for northern Faerghus. Galatea would be the most sensible plan. Ingrid, can your family house our troops on short notice? It would be the majority of this force, although I’m sending Claude and the professor back to Garreg Mach to gather more troops.”

__

Ingrid wrinkled her nose. “Maybe for a few nights, highness, but we’ll need a place to relocate quickly. Galatea’s position is vulnerable to attacks out of Fhirdiad; we don’t have the defenses of Fraldarius or Gautier.”

__

“If all goes to plan, you won’t need such defenses,” Dimitri said. “We aim to march on Fhirdiad; this could be our chance to take the city.”

__

Ingrid and Sylvain both gaped at Dimitri. Felix was glad he wasn’t the only one slow to adapt to the newfound authority of their army leader.

__

“A few nights is all we need, Ingrid,” Felix cut in. “Then we can relocate to Fraldarius and wait for Byleth to arrive with troops within marching distance of Fhirdiad. Annette and I will be able to join you after the wedding.”

__

“The  _ wedding _ ?” Sylvain said, his voice cracking with a delighted laugh. “You mean you’re actually going to marry her?”

“I  _ said _ in the  _ letter _ that I sent you,” Felix said through gritted teeth, “that was  _ dangerous _ to send but I wanted to keep you  _ informed _ –”

__

“I know, I read it! Several times, actually,” Sylvain said. “I just assumed that was part of the ruse. I didn’t think you were actually going to – have you kissed her yet? You would do things out of order.”

“Sylvain!” Ingrid said, casting a wayward elbow back against his ribs.

“You shouldn’t wait until your fifth anniversary to tell her you like her, you know.”

“ _ Sylvain _ ,” Dimitri said, and Felix was shocked to hear a trace of amusement. He’d thought the prince had forgotten what amusement was. Felix did not care for this.

__

“How’s she doing, Felix?” Ingrid asked, and Felix narrowed his eyes at her. She was still maintaining an air of professionalism, but all three of them had pivoted away from battle strategy entirely too quickly, and it was one against three on trying to steer them back.

__

“Well, she’s been impressed into Cornelia’s forces, so at the moment? Not great,” Felix scowled. He sighed and uncrossed his arms, leaning his elbows on the table. “If you can clear out, get out of Cornelia’s reach – her plan was a gambit to begin with. If it fails, and I can get Annette back to Dominic – I think we have a chance of making it out of this.”

__

“Except that she’ll be married to you,” Sylvain interjected, and braced for impact from another elbow from Ingrid.

__

She didn’t deign to react, however, and tilted her head as she eyed Felix curiously. “How’s she been for the past few weeks, though? Are things . . . is she doing okay?”

__

Felix thought back to the last few weeks, to Annette grabbing onto him for dear life and dragging him after her as she charged ahead with a new plan and fighting tooth and nail against everyone in her claustrophobic world. He thought back to the previous night, and that morning – which seemed a world away – when Annette had pulled him against her for half the night and then pulled herself against him as she reached up to kiss him, desperate and nervous and sweet. If he could just get her back to Dominic – if he could just get her  _ out _ of Dominic – he might have enough courage to finally tell her. He might be brave enough to hope that it was something she wanted to hear.

__

“I think . . . I think we’ll be okay,” he said softly. “I think she’s going to be okay.”

“You’re smiling.”

“Shut up, Sylvain,” Felix said.

__

“I’m glad to hear she’s well, Felix,” Dimitri said, expertly sensing when Felix was on the verge of challenging someone to a duel with practiced ease. “I’m sorry we can’t attend the wedding.

“It’s not . . . we’re not . . . never mind,” Felix stammered uselessly. “We going over battle plans or what? I told my men I’d meet them at dawn.”

__

Dimitri nodded with a smile that made Felix feel calmer than he wanted to admit. He reached behind him to a box of papers piled in the corner and picked up a map, unrolling it on the table. For the second time in forty-eight hours, Felix found himself leaning over a map of Fódlan as if the contours of rivers and mountains might help him knit their broken kingdom and his broken life back together.

__

As Felix glanced up quickly and scanned the faces in front of him, friendships so old they might as well be called family at this point, he had the briefest flash of hope that maybe they could stitch something back together. He still had much he wanted to say to Dimitri, and little of it was kind. He still had several follow-up questions for Ingrid, about Sylvain, and for Sylvain, about Ingrid. But it felt, as the four of them crowded around the tiny table, hands brushing together and awkwardly darting away, that they were mapping a route home for the first time in a long, long time.

***

Dimitri had offered countless sleeping quarters to Felix for that evening, seeming to think of a new and very sensible option every quarter of an hour. Felix’s replies had remained terse and in the negative, but ultimately, the night passed so quickly that Felix was surprised to realize that dawn was almost upon them. Sylvain and Ingrid offered to escort him back to the rendezvous point, leaving Claude and Dimitri to finalize the plan and translate the situation to Byleth once she returned from her own night watch.

Dimtri followed them the doorway of the tent, lingering just outside as Felix stepped into the cold night air.

“I’m glad to see you’re well, Felix,” he said, before Felix could dart away into the night. “I’d say give my regards to Annette, but perhaps she doesn’t –”

“She’d be thrilled,” Felix said dully. “You can give them to her yourself in a week.”

Dimitri smiled broadly, a version of his smile that Felix had forgotten, and moved to clasp him on the shoulder. Felix took a step back quickly. It was his injured arm, and instinct took over. They both seemed to realize what had happened at the same time. Dimitri dropped his hand just as Felix regained his footing and swayed forward again, but the moment had happened, and the moment was gone.

“The goddess keep you safe until we meet again,” Dimitri said, with the slight bow you gave your equal, and Felix bit his tongue from snapping that he needed to start acting like a king if he expected to be one. “I’m glad Annette has you,” he added. He was gone before Felix decided what objection, if any, he had to make to such a statement. Pulling the hood of his cloak over his head, Felix followed Sylvain and Ingrid into the woods.

They traveled silently for the better part of the journey; his comrades there for safety rather than companionship. The moon had disappeared from the sky now, hanging low behind the trees, but the traces of dawn lit their way as they reached the point where Felix left his men. He could see them in the distance, his most trusted troops and capable fighters. Felix was relieved to see them unharmed – there would be little activity on the border between the Kingdom and the Alliance, but the last few days had set him on edge.

“I’ll leave you here,” he said, turning to face Sylvain and Ingrid and speaking for the first time in a long while. “Try to stay alive before we meet again.”

“Always sentimental,” Ingrid replied with equal parts sarcasm and unspoken affection. “The same goes for you. You’re impossibly stupid to walk back into Cornelia’s territory, you know.”

“Dominic isn’t Cornelia’s,” Felix muttered, “Even if she thinks it is.”

“I can’t believe you’re actually going through with this wedding,” Sylvain said, running his hand through his bangs until his fingers knocked against the top of his cloak. They stuck up at an odd, sleepy angle, and Felix would have felt guilty for keeping the pair up all night if he didn’t suspect Sylvain was about to be extremely annoying.

“Yeah, well, I’m not doing it for fun,” Felix said darkly. Unconvincingly. He was glad it was still dark enough that Sylvain couldn’t accuse him of blushing. “I’m trying to get her out of Dominic alive.”

“It just doesn’t seem your style, Fe,” Sylvain said. “I thought you’d be more, I don’t know, sneak into her bedroom and climb out of a window in the dead of night.”

“Tried that, didn’t work,” Felix said. “My men are waiting, you know.”

“Don’t rush me, this is a sentimental moment,” Sylvain said with a dramatic sigh. Felix could feel, rather than see, that Ingrid was rolling her eyes. He checked. He was right. Sylvain continued, “Our little Annie, all grown up. I just wish I could see her in a wedding dress; tell her how beautiful she – don’t punch me!”

Whether he was talking to Ingrid or Felix was uncertain, but they both dropped their arms mid-raise and took a step back.

“Stop acting like this is an actually wedding. It’s an  _ escape plan _ ,” Felix said. “I’m sure when Annette  _ actually _ gets married, she’ll have a better guest list at her reception than the likes of –”

He cut himself off suddenly, turned quickly towards Sylvain, then Ingrid, then away from both entirely. Felix paced a few steps away, as if he was going to walk away from them midsentence. He then pivoted back and returned to his starting position, staring at them both intensely, then back down at his own boots, something akin to a smile playing on his lips.

“Um, you okay, Felix?” Ingrid asked. “Did you want to  _ finish  _ that sentence, or are you wanting us to fill in the blanks, or. . . ?” She trailed off as well, and Felix looked up at them with something even closer to a smile.

“You’re right,” he said. “I hate to say it, but Sylvain is right. You should be there to see Annette in a wedding dress.”

He crossed his arms and looked at the sky, taking a deep breath. The stars that had so transfixed Dimitri earlier that night were beginning to fade away. Felix looked back at Ingrid and Sylvain, who were staring at him with open confusion.

“What do you think?” Felix said, extending a hand forward. “How would you like to attend my wedding reception?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do not ask me how long it takes to travel across Foldan on horseback or on foot or in an army; do I look like JRR Tolkein to you? Absolutely not. It takes as long as is narratively convenient, as the Fire Emblem gods intended.
> 
> As a side note: Felix definitely went and got his favorite sword back; that just would’ve been a boring scene so I didn’t bother writing it. But if that was deeply important to you. Like. It was a pretty nice sword. He would have missed it.
> 
> Anyways! Happy Annette Week; sorry Annette isn’t actually in this chapter! I could’ve timed that better. It’s always weird to write a chapter with only one of our dynamic duo, but Annette returns to us next chapter, so take heart! I’m sure we all miss her. Maybe less punching next chapter? Maybe. I make no promises; Annie seems pretty ready to throw hands these days.
> 
> Regardless of what happens, I look forward to seeing you then. Stay safe out there, fam. All my love to you and your sourdough starters!
> 
> [ Obligatory twitter link!](https://twitter.com/Rose3Writes)


	15. Annette Changes Course

Annette sat on a large rock, building a tower out of smaller rocks. She balanced them on top of each other – first with magic to hold them aloft, then without. Two layers. Three layers. Four layers. And then it fell. She could get the tower up to eight layers with very little magic, but gravity worked against her every time she snapped her fingers to release the incantation binding tower in place.

She was bored. Waiting for an ambush, it turned out, was boring. Today, she didn’t mind boring. She started another pebble tower and smiled to herself at how boring this morning had been.

Cornelia, conversely, was growing more vexed with each passing minute. They had high ground, making it easy to look down into the roadway below them as it stretched from the northern coast towards Garreg Mach. There were limited breaks in the mountain range that separated Alliance territory from Faerghus, and while they hadn’t needed to climb a mountain in order to find the ideal spot for an ambush, they had marched steadily upwards for the first two hours after sunrise and Conrelia had stopped the halt at the plateau of the climb, leaving them shielded by surrounding mountains but with a clear view of any approaching travelers from the north. Except, of course, that no travelers appeared from the north. Dimitri’s army remained missing in action. And Cornelia did not like this.

“Is this  _ not _ the major route to that wretched monastery?” she demanded of her battalion leader, a stout army general who had a magnificent moustache and a permanently dour expression. “They left Derdriu two days ago. What’s taking them so long to get here?”

“Impossible to say, my lady,” the general intoned, his expression and moustache unchanging as he spoke. “The goddess works in mysterious ways.”

Cornelia looked unimpressed with the machinations of the goddess, and continued as if he had not spoken. “Perhaps they have greater injuries than we expected?” she said, her face growing eager for a moment. It was immediately replaced by a look of disdain. “Or perhaps a greater fighting force?” she added, a hint of concern in her voice. “These Empire eyes are  _ useless _ . What I wouldn’t give for access to a half-decent scryer right now.”

Annette’s stomach growled in an unladylike manner, but no one seemed to notice. Not only had dinner been scarce last night, but evidently the grain sack she’d destroyed so gleefully had been the basis of breakfast, as well. Annette kept her rations out of sight. They were for emergencies, not just a lousy morning, and she wasn’t entirely sure she could snack without drawing the attention – and possibly the ire – of the surrounding troops. She felt vaguely guilty as she glanced around the makeshift camp. Morale hadn’t been high to begin with, and the mysterious disappearance of the main staple for both dinner and breakfast, coupled with Cornelia’s increasing impatience as the morning dragged on into nothingness, only made things worse.

Cornelia continued her tirade, her battalion leader listening impassively, his expression unchanged. “Perhaps we should send another scout?” she suggested, looking over at her bedraggled and impatient troops. “There might be a direction we’ve missed. Perhaps they’ve circumvented us.”

The general shrugged. “It’s unlikely there are roads that you haven’t accounted for, my lady,” he said dully. “You’ve been . . . very thorough in your dispatches thus far this morning.”

Cornelia shot him a glare, unimpressed with his diplomacy, and walked away from him, shouting to a paladin who was drawing a lewd caricature of the goddess in the dirt with his boot. “You there,” she snapped at him, and he drew his foot across the dirt hastily, although Annette didn’t suppose Cornelia was a particularly devout believer. “You’re not doing anything important right now. I need you to ride down the northeastern trade route.”

“Y-yes, my lady,” the man stumbled quickly to attention. “We sent Lucius down that route this morning, no?”

“Well if you ride half as well as you make petty observations, perhaps you can overtake him,” Cornelia said sweetly. “And then you’ll have a companion to keep you company if you’re unlucky enough to return here with no news to report. Now g –”

Her final command was interrupted by the screech of a pegasus, and a shadow across the sun caused Annette to lose her concentration, breaking the spell and sending her rock tower scattering. She put aside her disappointment – it had been a complicated inverted design with the largest rocks at the top – and shielded her eyes from the sun to see a pegasus rider circling to land in their camp. The woman was dressed in full formal attire, a telltale sign that she was a messenger from the Kingdom – no, Annette reminded herself, from the Dukedom. Kingdom messengers had little in terms of livery these days; they were fortunate to even have mounts.

“Lady Cornelia! I bring urgent news from the Capital,” the woman called out, dismounting and sprinting towards Cornelia at top speed.

“What is it  _ now _ ?” snapped Cornelia under her breath, turning to face the trembling woman. Annette recognized the telltale signs of a rider who had been traveling at top speeds; a luxury that Dominic could scarcely afford but that Garreg Mach saw almost daily during the thorny war negotiations from Gautier and Fraldarius.

“Milady! I bring a report from out scouts along the northern coast,” the woman said, her labored breathing almost disappearing in her professionalism. Annette had couldn't even imagine the grace and poise it took to act as a pegasus courier, but she took comfort in how many times Ingrid had remarked that Annette’s ability to reduce complex incantations to a simple formula seemed, well,  _ magical _ to her. The messenger continued, “Dimitri’s army has begun travel up north; they are entirely separate from the Alliance army now, from what we can tell –”

“Yes yes, I know, I received the message in Enbarr  _ days _ ago,” Cornelia interrupted. “The brat and his pack march from Derdriu. Don’t tell me they’re just now leaving?”

The messenger shook her head emphatically. “No, my lady, you misunderstand me,” she said. “They’ve reversed course this morning; they appear to be rerouting for northern Faerghus, not Garreg Mach. As I left, our best guesses put them en route to Galatea territory.”

Annette felt as if the wind had been sucked out of her lungs, and after a moment of drawing shaky breath, she realized with horror that she wasn’t being metaphorical. The very air seemed to shift and warp around Cornelia, and both the messenger and the otherwise taciturn battalion leader stumbled backwards with sharp gasps. Cornelia stalked towards the messenger, towering over her as she drew herself up to her full height.

“And what business, pray tell,” she sneered down at the messenger, “Could they possibly have in Galatea?”

The messenger gulped, staggering a few steps back. “We’re not sure yet, my lady,” she gasped out. “Treaties with Fraldarius remain at a stalemate and Gautier has been engaged in a recent flare of skirmishes at the border, but –” she cut off, looking nervously Cornelia, who had closed the gap between them and now raised the woman up to eye level, grasping her roughly under the arm with surprising strength. Annette jumped up from her rock and took a few steps forward, not knowing what she was attempting to accomplish, before grinding to a halt as she realized everyone else in the army was taking steps in the opposite direction, leaving a wide circle around Cornelia and her prey.

“But what?” Cornelia hissed, leaning closer. “I don’t have time for your stuttering.”

“We think it’s possible he makes for Fhirdiad,” the messenger said, so faintly that Annette wasn’t sure she would have heard if she hadn’t been leaning so close, and hadn’t waited to hear those words for so long. The woman glanced at Annette and she realized she’d let out a small gasp without realizing, but the messenger’s eyes were pleading, not accusatory. Annette took a small, foolish step back and those eyes flicked back up to Cornelia. Annette could barely make out the words as she added, “And we’ve lost track of the Alliance leader. He no longer travels with the prince.”

Flinging the messenger to the ground, Cornelia let out a string of curses, typical Fódlan defamations against the goddess mixed with a language that Annette had never heard. The messenger slowly crawled backwards on her elbows, and Annette ran to her side without thinking, helping her into a seated position and casting a glare that she hoped was defiant at Cornelia. But Cornelia took no notice of them – her momentary outburst fizzled into a series of muttered comments about uselessness and incompetence, and she turned to the battalion leader, her face a mask of fury.

“Ready the men; we move out in twenty minutes,” she snapped at him, her voice raised enough that the entire battalion could here. “We can reach Fhirdiad tonight if we don’t stop; there is nothing for us in this barren excuse for a territory.”

“As you wish, my lady,” the battalion leader intoned, walking towards a cluster of soldiers with an air of stern efficiency.

Cornelia rounded on the pegasus knight, who Annette had helped to her feet and who was gingerly prodding at her arm where Cornelia had gripped her. “You,” she said, and the woman snapped to attention, the color draining from her face. “Return to Fhirdiad at once and tell them to prepare for siege. Call patrol troops home; empty the coffers for weapons and mercenary aid. All eyes are on Fhirdiad now.”

“As y-you say, my lady,” the messenger stumbled. “What of the troops we’ve dispatched to protect and guard the local villages? There has been an increase in bandit activity along the –”

“Perhaps you didn’t hear me properly,” Cornelia replied evenly, patiently, and as if she might strike the messenger dead between breaths. “All troops. Return to Fhirdiad. Immediately. Do I make myself clear?” The woman nodded, and turned on her heel to sprint back towards her mount, noticeably faster than her original sprint towards the group. Annette was left standing alone in front of Cornelia; she hadn’t realized how much she had been hiding behind the messenger until she was gone.

Cornelia gave Annette a look of brief confusion, as if she’d forgotten she’d existed for a moment and was unpleasantly surprised to remember how object permanence worked. “Why are you standing there gaping, child?” she snapped at Annette, who shut her mouth with a click of her teeth. “Go help prepare to depart. I assume if you were in an army for a few months you know how to make yourself useful.”

“I . . .” Annette started, and trailed off into a panic silence. Cornelia looked down at her with an unrelenting glare, and where others might have been silenced by such utter disdain, Annette’s panicked brain took the opposite reaction. “I can’t go to Fhirdiad!” she blurted out, her voice cracking slightly as she spoke. “I need to – you need to take me home!”

Cornelia tilted her head to the side and looked at Annette curiously. She took a step forward, and before Annette could move away, Cornelia’s hand shot out and she grasped Annette roughly by the chin, forcing her face upwards. Her grip was unreasonably tight. “What,” she said quietly, “Did you just say?”

Annette could tell that she was about to feel very stupid, even before the words came out of her mouth.

“Lady Cornelia, I’m to wed Duke Fraldarius in five days time,” she said. “We cannot travel to Fhirdiad; I must return to Dominic. I did what you asked of me; you must take me home.”

Cornelia gave a short, unimpressed laugh, and sure enough, Annette felt very, very stupid indeed. “I don’t have time to act as personal escort to every noble maiden who is foolhardy to think that wartime is a good opportunity to pursue matrimony,” she spat at Annette, and Annette felt her cheeks grow hot.

“Then give me a horse, and I shall travel to Dominic myself,” Annette shot back with a lot more confidence than she felt, her neck still at an undignified and uncomfortable tilt. “I asked not for an escort.”

“No,” Cornelia said simply, brutally, with no room for discussion. She dropped her hands into a casual shrug. “I have no horses to spare.”

“Then,” Annette said, taking a deep breath. “I shall walk. I bid you safe travels, Lady.” She gave a curtsey brief enough to be just shy of insulting, and turned on her heel. She could not walk to Dominic, obviously, but if she could get a nearby village, she could find a way to send a message to her uncle, or to Felix. She mostly just needed be away from Cornelia as quickly as possible.

Cornelia grabbed Annette by the back of the shoulder and yanked her backwards, spinning her around and throwing her off balance. Annette stumbled to regain footing and dignity, knowing with an inward groan that Cornelia had seen the flash of terror across her face she first made eye contact, arms flailing in front of her.

“It would not do to lose you, my dear,” Cornelia breathed softy. “It would not do at all. You travel with us.”

“No,” whispered Annette, and she found she’d lost her voice and her diplomacy. All that was left was a gnawing, certain panic that if Cornelia took her to Fhirdiad, she would never leave.

“We’ll send your duke a message once we’ve arrived in Fhirdiad; he can come pick you up if he’s so set on this wedding,” Cornelia said. She gave Annette a poisonous smile. “He might as well join in defending Fhirdiad once he arrives – it’ll kill two birds with one stone. And if he doesn’t arrive in time for the battle, don’t worry, dear, I’m sure we’ll find some use for you.”

Annette swallowed hard. “I appreciate your faith in my usefulness, my lady,” she started, “But I was promised a swift return to Dominic following this battle. That such a battle did not come to pass seems irrelevant to the timeline you provided.” She paused, narrowing her eyes. “I fail to see how the Dukedom intends to negotiate an alliance with Fraldarius if you cannot be trusted to uphold such a simple agreement.”

Cornelia’s smile faded, and she grabbed Annette by her upper arm, pulling her close. “Fraldarius will just have to learn to a little more flexibility towards the Dukedom’s needs,” she said. She dropped Annette’s arm and fisted the back of her hair, yanking upwards so Annette was forced once again to look up at a painful, unnatural angle. “Starting with you, lamb. If you’re truly to be a lady of such noble standing, then you had better learn some  _ obedience _ .”

Annette couldn’t see the steel glint as her dagger made contact across Cornelia’s inner shoulder, but she could feel the knife cutting through fabric and skin, sharp and sudden and dangerous. Annette stumbled backwards as Cornelia let go of her with a cry of pain. She held Felix’s dagger out in front her, her arm held steady by pure adrenaline. Cornelia looked at her in shock, gingerly pressing her fingers to the gash across her shoulder. She pulled her hand away, covered in blood that seemed too dark and too purple in the light of the relentless noon sun.

Annette swung the dagger out in a wide arc in front of her as she moved away from Cornelia. “Stay back!” she said, her voice louder and stronger than she’d anticipated, wild energy coursing through her body. “Don’t come near me! Don’t any of you come near me!”

Surprisingly, this tactic appeared to work – Annette had rather expected two dozen highly trained soldiers to charge at her in formation, but they continued to hang back, an invisible semi-circle being drawn around her and Cornelia. Perhaps, Annette realized, it was not her threat that stopped the onslaught, but Cornelia’s hand, casually raised behind her as if to tell the soldiers to halt.

“Headstrong, obstinate girl,” Cornelia hissed. “You’re as aggravating as your father. He also never knew his place.”

“Enough talk. Let me go and I will not harm you,” Annette said. She narrowed her eyes, pointing the dagger straight out, directly towards Cornelia’s heart. “I am not afraid of you, Cornelia.”

Cornelia looked at Annette, the girl’s hair falling loose around her shoulders, clutching a dagger in one hand and conjuring a wind spell in the other. Cornelia gave a dark, bitter laugh, the corners of her lips curling upwards to bare her teeth.

“You should be,” she said to Annette, her voice low and insistent. And then, in a snarl, “You  _ will  _ be.”

She flung her hand outward, and a dark, pulsing mass of energy hurtled forward, warping the air around it so that the world seemed to bend inwardly towards it as it plummeted towards Annette.

Annette had experience with dark magic on the battlefield. It was unpredictable, difficult to cure, and critically understudied and undertheorized. It was unformed and dangerous, and even a single hit had the potential to decimate mages much more competent than her.

But it was also slow. And Annette was fast.

Annette dove to the side, the dark energy rushing past her in what seemed like slow motion compared to the rhythms she was used to with wind spells. As it brushed by her, the spell seemed to reach out towards her, the edges of the amorphous form grasping at her hair and cloak and arms. She felt singe marks against her skin as she flung herself towards the ground, and she smelled a faint scent of decay that she desperately hoped had come from the spell itself and not, say, her limbs.

Annette fell rather gracelessly against the packed dirt, but quickly rolled back into standing position, the wind spell flying off her fingers in the counterattack before she’d even fully regained her footing.

The gust of wind sped forward at terrifying velocity, one thousand tiny cuts of air moving in tandem towards their mark. Cornelia held her hand up and the spell seemed to part around her and then dissipate. She had barely moved a muscle since the spells had begun flying. She smirked slightly as the wind faded around her.

She didn’t expect the second spell, however, flying fast and certain off of Annette’s fingers. It slammed into her, the impact zone centering on the wide and jagged gash across her shoulder.

Annette had always prided herself on accuracy.

Cornelia’s eyes flashed with anger more than pain as she whirled back to face Annette. “A baseline wind incantation? You’re trying to kill me with a spell that any  _ child _ can memorize?” she shrieked at Annette, but she winced as she held her shoulder, and Annette knew she’d hit her mark.

“I’m not trying to  _ kill _ anymore,” Annette said. “I’m just trying to go home –”

Her protests were cut off as the ground underneath her seemed to distort, the hard, packed dirt beneath her feet becoming pliable and shifting. Annette’s left foot plunged into muck that had been solid ground moments before, and she yanked her ankle out and back with a faint squelching sound. Annette leapt out of way, and she could sense, rather than see, the small perimeter of corrosion that stretched around her. She threw herself to solid land, stomping the ground to test that it would hold, and then raised her eyes to find her target, a more powerful and complex wind incantation already lacing up her fingertips.

Annette looked up just in time to see the swirling haze of dark energy right before it slammed into her. The force of impact knocked her off the feet, but that was nothing compared to the magic itself. It was as if the air was sucked out of her lungs and the world was thrown out of focus and the sound around her was only screaming, all in the same moment. It was as if she had fallen headfirst into chaos.

Annette could feel it morphing around her, enveloping her, sinking into her pores and through her skin and shredding her to pieces from the inside out. Once again she felt the world shift into slow motion as she flew backwards. Dark magic was wild. It was critically understudied. She only knew one spell from it, taught to her by the same woman who was now trying to rip her apart, and she hardly felt practiced or competent in that spell. Still, it would have to do.

Annette said a prayer that the spell Cornelia hit her with had the same properties as the only dark magic she had practiced. She then followed the logic of that spell, the desired chaos of the universe, the decaying wood beneath her fingertips the day before, and pushed against the energy that was even now settling into her bloodstream.

Sylvain had once described magic resistance in a class lecture as “exactly the same as casting a spell, but upside down.” Ingrid had scoffed that he was bluffing to get out of answering the question, but Annette had been frustrated to realize that this was the explanation that would stick with her for the rest of her life. She was not casting a dark magic spell against the warped and destructive energy that surrounded her. She was taking the same spell, and pushing it outwards – turning it, as Sylvain said, upside down. And as she pushed back against the spell, she could feel her lungs expanding again, her fingers remembering how to move, her vision clearing even as the pain continued to pulse through her. She had weathered a direct hit. She could weather another.

Annette hit the ground in a dead fall with a sickening thud, and the air rushed out of her lungs again. The dagger clattered the ground beside her as it slipped from her fingers.

Annette squeezed her eyes shut and willed the world to stop spinning. The dark magic blast hadn’t settled against her heart of any vital organs, and she didn’t think she’d broken anything in the impact. But she felt like every part of her body was bruised and as if her lungs would forget the pattern of existence if she didn’t consciously remind them. Somewhere in the back of her head she heard horse hooves in the background – the soldiers had already given up on watching the battle unfold and were preparing to leave. She hadn’t even slowed them down. She was so, so tired, and so, so angry, and she was never going to see her father again and Felix was going to blame himself for this. A shadow cast over her face and she looked up to see Cornelia standing over her, looking at her as if she was an amusement and like the past ten minutes had been a fun way to pass the time.

“You’re almost impressive, you know,” Cornelia cooed down at her, leaning in slightly. “Not many would still be so alert after a direct hit. Now are you going to stand up on your own, or do I need to get someone to carry you to Fhirdiad?”

Annette’s vision swam for a second, and when the world snapped back into view all she could focus on was Cornelia’s self-satisfied, victorious smile. And suddenly, Annette wasn’t tired anymore. She was just angry.

“I said,” Annette snarled through gritted teeth. “Stay  _ away _ from me.”

__

The bursts of light from her hand slammed into Cornelia at point blank range, finding their mark before they’d even had time to properly cohere into an arrow shape. Sagittae was a spell designed to pierce, not one of blunt force, but at this distance and with this intensity each beam hit Cornelia with an audible crack, knocking her backwards in a blinding mirror of Annette’s earlier aerial trajectory. Annette pulled herself to her elbows, then her knees, then her feet. She brushed her hair out of her face, smearing something sticky and wet – blood or mud or sweat or all of the above – across her forehead as she did so. She stretched her arms in front of her, muscles aching as she swung her hands, ready to block and to cast and to move. The ache was suddenly invigorating, as if she’d woken up after a long but beautiful hike, as if she could remember what it was like to be alive.

Cornelia had caught herself from hitting the ground with the same impact as Annette, and she now whirled around to face the girl, the smile on her face completely gone. She didn’t go through the typical motions that Annette associated with conjuring a battle spell, but there was a static change in the air, and Annette could sense her preparing something, drawing energy together to release outward, untamed and deadly.

“I said you needed to come to Fhirdiad with us,” she told Annette, her eyes flashing with anger. “But no one there will need you to be conscious.”

Annette heard footsteps behind her, but blocked them out as she focused on channeling her strength into a final spell; hopefully one that would at least make Cornelia’s day a bit worse. She didn’t have much hope of escape but she would be damned if she didn’t go down without a fight.

A hand came down on her shoulder and Annette threw her arm and elbow back without looking, prepared to punch and claw and slash at any of Cornelia’s troops that dared to come near her. If they were dishonorable enough to make the fight twenty against one, Annette was dishonorable enough to bite. But her elbow and fist met only air: the figure behind her sidestepped her impossibly quickly, and fingers wrapped around her wrist – too strong for her to break free, but too gentle for it to be an attack.

“An odd day for a sparring match,” Felix murmured in her ear, and Annette’s gasp was lost to the wind as he raised his voice and called to Cornelia. “Haven’t you anything better to do today? I was told this mission was quite important.” Annette felt the magical charge in the air dissipate as Cornelia dropped her preparations for yet another spell, staring behind Annette with the same shock on her face that Annette felt coursing through her body.

“Felix!” Annette stammered in surprise, and he let go of her wrist as she whirled around to face him. He looked absolutely terrible – an unsightly bruise spread across his jaw, he had the faint traces of a black eye hastily cured with shoddy healing magic, and an unpleasant web of scratches spread across his neck, disappearing into his high-collared shirt. He also looked as though he hadn’t slept in three days, which might have been the case. He looked down at her and there was a cut across his lower lip and Annette had never wanted to see anyone more in her entire life.

“Duke Fraldarius!” Cornelia cried at the same time, with about the same amount of surprise, but Felix held up a hand, not looking away from Annette and clearly not interested in Cornelia’s next sentence.

“I told you to stay safe,” he said, almost reproachfully, lifting her face up towards him and running his other hand across a gash that stretched from cheek to jaw.

“I’m fine,” Annette said weakly. “I look worse than I feel, I think.” This was only partially true, and she gripped Felix’s shirt for balance. Her knees felt like they might give away at any moment, whether from exertion or residual dark magic effects or the pure shock of seeing Felix there, when he was supposed to be somewhere halfway across the continent right now. Annette wondered if this was some sort of dazed hallucination, if she was just dreaming of Felix and his searching, demanding, caring eyes while in actuality she was unconscious in the back of a supply wagon being carted off to Fhirdiad. 

Felix leaned down and kissed her and he certainly  _ felt _ real.

The kiss was swift and fierce and forceful, almost overpowering in its sudden intensity. Annette’s grip on his shirt tightened; she was sure that if he stepped away from her she would lose all balance. Felix dropped the hand that had been brushing across her cheek and reached around to pull her closer, perhaps sensing her shaking as she pulled herself up towards him. Annette let out a small whimper as he inadvertently pressed his fingers against a newly formed bruise on her upper back, and Felix pulled away, as suddenly as he had leaned in, concern flashing across his face. Annette loosened her fingers against him and laid her palms flat against his chest. She blinked up at Felix, still dazed – wanting him close, wanting to breathe, wanting the world to stop spinning, or to disappear altogether, so that she could go back to kissing Felix Fraldarius even as he was looking back towards Cornelia again, finally acknowledging her presence with a disdainful sneer.

“I was under the impression you were going to return my fiancé to me unharmed, Cornelia,” he said, pulling Annette against his side, one arm looped around her waist protectively and the other already reaching to his sword belt. His voice was raised for her surrounding battalion to hear. For two surrounding battalions, Annette realized, for Felix’s own men traveled with him, hanging back behind the makeshift sparring circle, their hands resting on their weapons just a little too obviously to be truly casual. Annette took a step inwards and Felix’s grip around her waist tightened along with his grip around the hilt of his sword. Felix made no attempt to hide his anger and disgust; Annette rather wished that he would.

“And I was under the impression that you wouldn’t be joining us for the battle today,” Cornelia said, casting an angry glance, first at Felix and then at Annette, like a child whose favorite toy has been taken away.

Annette took a tiny step forward, moving between Felix and Cornelia. Tension hung heavy in the air even if the electrical energy of magic had dissipated. If Cornelia unleashed another spell, aimed at Felix – he was fast but it was possible that Cornelia was faster. Annette didn’t care to find out. And she could take another hit.

Felix, however, let go of the sword at his hip with a shrug that was almost casual, and shifted around Annette so both his hands settled lightly around her waist, equal parts possessive and unconcerned.

“Unavoidable business called me back home yesterday, but thankfully they were matters that I was able to settle quickly,” he said. “I’ve brought some of my best troops; a taste of the strength you can expect from Fraldarius in the future.”

He glanced around their makeshift camp, where they had waited for Dimitri’s troops for the better part of the morning, and Annette would have giggled at his exaggerated feign of confusion if she wasn’t still worried that Cornelia might start casting bolts of dark magic at any moment. Felix added, “I assume if you’re wasting magic reserves, then the fighting has concluded? You all seem unharmed – was the boar prince not with his troops? He generally leaves more crushed skulls in his wake.”

Annette twisted in Felix’s arms to look at him, trying to keep alarm off her face. His false disdain for Dimitri was indistinguishable from the very real disdain he’d shown as long as she’d known him. He sounded so bitter now that she briefly wondered if the meeting had not gone as planned, despite his presence here now. She looked up at Felix with concerned and he raised his eyebrows at her, giving her a slight, almost imperceptible shake of his head.  _ Not now.  _ Or _. It’s fine _ .

“The  _ boar prince _ , as you call him, didn’t deign to make an appearance this morning,” Cornelia snapped, walking over towards them. Annette took an unconscious step back, stepping against Felix. He wrapped his arms around her a little tighter. Cornelia continued, “He makes for northern Faerghus instead. Something must have convinced him to change routes. We’re leaving for Fhirdiad immediately; we cannot leave the city unprotected.”

“You’re leaving for Fhirdiad?” Felix asked, and Annette could hear the venom in his voice, soft and slow and ready to bite.

“There’s only one reason he would turn his troops northward,” Cornelia snapped. “It matters not if I take him in ambush or siege defense so long as I finally hold his head in my hands.”

“When you say Fhirdiad,” Felix said, largely ignoring Cornelia’s comments. “Did you mean by way of Dominic, or were you planning on sending an escort along with Annette?”

“I –” Cornelia started, and for once she had no way to finish that sentence.

“I certainly hope you weren’t planning on sending her back to Dominic unaccompanied,” Felix continued. “These roads can be unsafe for travelers, my fiancée is  _ delicate _ , Cornelia.” Annette resisted the urge to stomp on his foot – how he could tease her at a time like this was beyond her.

“No one wants Miss Dominic to travel alone,” Cornelia finally said, shooting Annette a poisonous glare. Annette blinked back at her with wide, innocent eyes, envisioning a Cutting Gale going straight through her heart.

“Well, then, perhaps this hasn’t been a complete waste of time. You go on to Fhirdiad, and I’ll ensure Miss Dominic doesn’t travel alone,” Felix said. He stepped back from Annette, turning her to face him. “Shall we go, dear?” he asked, and the pet name was ridiculous coming from him, and Annette wrinkled her nose at him, and he leaned down and kissed it, and she wanted to grab him and keep him against her but he was already pulling back, and walking away, and leading her away with him.

“We’re not  _ done here _ , boy,” Cornelia yelled after them, and Felix paused, looking over his shoulder. “You’re needed in Fhirdiad; this will be a pivotal battle.”

Felix turned fully, and Annette with him. They stared at Cornelia in tandem silence before Felix finally replied, “No.”

“What do you mean,  _ no _ ?” Cornelia said, her voice rising in anger. “Did you not hear me? Dimitri makes for Fhirdiad, an army in tow. I have the entire Dukedom to defend.”

“And I have a wedding to be in,” Felix snapped. “We all have things to do, I don’t see what that has to do with –”

“We’ll join you,” Annette cut him off, stepping forward again, her body once more a slight, subtle barrier that Cornelia’s magic would hopefully not circumvent. “After the wedding. I give you my word, Cornelia, after the wedding you will see us in Fhirdiad.”

Cornelia curled her lip and looked down at Annette for practically the first time since Felix arrived. “I’m not negotiating with you, girl. Your word means little to me.”

“You  _ are _ negotiating with her, and her word is the most valuable thing you’re going to get,” Felix snapped, his fingers tense and tightening along Annette’s arm. “And if you’re so desperate to return your troops to Fhirdiad, it’s hardly in your best interest to argue with that.”

Annette looked behind her, sensing a slight shift in the atmosphere – not from Cornelia’s magic, but from the surrounding troops. Felix’s battalion had their hands on their weapons and their attention on the conversation. Annette wondered if these really were the finest troops of Fraldarius. She wondered how many people Cornelia was willing to sacrifice to answer the same question.

She turned back and saw Cornelia looking over their shoulders, evidently making similar calculations. Her eyes snapped back to Felix and Annette, but centered on Annette. “I said you were like your father, girl, but I was wrong. Fantine had your potential and she was also useless, in the end.”

“I –” Annette started, not even sure how to begin to answer such a remark.

“Safe travels, Cornelia,” Felix said at the same time, once more tugging Annette away. This time he had no intention of turning; Annette struggled to keep pace with him, even with his hands at her back and holding her arm, nudging her along.

“I think we’re going to die,” she muttered to him. “I think this is it. This is how we die.”

“Just keep walking,” Felix said through clenched teeth.

When they reached his circle of men, Annette could feel Felix breathe a sigh of relief, and the men again subtly changed formation, closing in around the two as if to shield them from Cornelia. Felix paused beside his horse, turning to look at Annette.

“Do you need a healer before we leave?” he asked, worried. “What was she even  _ doing  _ to –”

“I’ll be okay,” Annette said, and her voice was shaky, but sincere. She would be, now that he was here. “The first hit’s the hardest, with magic.”

“I mostly brought swords,” Felix said, looking over her head at the composition of his troops, and it took her a moment to realize he was speaking of their general competencies, not his own personal weapon supply. “But if you need someone to take a look at your injuries –”

“I’m fine, Felix,” Annette said, catching his hand before he could run it over her scrapes and bruises and intertwining their fingers. She looked up at him, offering a faint smile. “Let’s just go home.”

He brushed her cheek regardless, the calluses on his thumb feather-light against what she knew would be a horrific bruise in the morning. “Was the kiss too much?” he asked, pulling away with sudden nervousness, and Annette had to hold his fingers tighter to keep him from backing away altogether. “In the moment it seemed – how do newlyweds greet each other?”

“Probably just like that, I think,” Annette said, biting back a laugh. “Although technically we aren’t –”

“Felix, dear, you’re dragging your feet, wouldn’t you say?” Cornelia’s voice cut through Annette’s point that you couldn’t be a newlywed until you were married. Annette jerked her head back, away from Felix. Cornelia was on horseback now, and she’d ridden up unsettlingly close to them. “It will take at least until tomorrow afternoon to get back to Dominic,” she said. “We had best leave now, don’t you think?”

“Dominic?” Annette asked.

“ _ We _ ?” Felix echoed.

Cornelia smiled. “You two lovebirds have convinced me. I don’t want to miss out on attending this wedding.”

“You just said that  _ Dimitri  _ –” Annette started, and Cornelia gave her a sharp glare that melted into another smile.

“Yes, yes, I’ll be sending some troops back to Fhirdiad to prepare for battle. But your wedding is in, what, four days? I can leave straight after. And this way, I’ll be able to pick up some reinforcements from Dominic – your uncle is  _ quite _ the powerful general, I don’t know if you knew that, pet,” Cornelia said.

Annette couldn’t help it, she shivered when Cornelia addressed her directly. The dark magic hit had taken the air out of her lungs, the sight out of her eyes.

Cornelia added, almost as an afterthought, “And of course it will be easier to pick up that Dukedom traitor; he might be useful to have on hand if we’re facing Dimitri’s army.” She cocked her head at Annette. “If you hurry to Fhirdiad after your honeymoon, you might be able to help us suss out their battle tactics, as well. But if not, I’m sure my mages know enough interrogation techniques to get your father to talk.”

“I never said you could travel with us,” said Felix, and Annette was grateful he didn’t take the bait, didn’t mention her father. She was sure if she mentioned her father she would scream, or cry, or attack, and that was probably what Cornelia wanted.

“Oh come now, we’re heading the same direction,” Cornelia said cheerfully. “It will mean half the night shifts for our men. So efficient! But I would like to leave now, so, up on the horse you two go.” She started to turn her own horse away, then pulled the reigns back. “By the way, Annette dear, you dropped this,” she said, holding out the dagger with the sharp point facing Annette’s throat. Annette froze, and it was Felix who reached out to take it, but Cornelia smiled at Annette before she rode away.

“Did you have much use for this?” he asked her, turning the knife over in his hands and frowning at the dark flecks of blood that clung to it still.

“You could say that,” Annette said, watching Cornelia ride away.

“Why’d she return it?” Felix said. “I don’t think she’s offering a truce.”

“She’s not, “Annette said, taking the dagger from Felix. He held on for a fraction of a second, but relinquished it and watched her silently as she tucked it in her sleeve once more. “She’s telling me that she’s not afraid of me. And that she knows I’m afraid of her.”

Felix wrapped his arms around Annette’s waist and looked down at her, defiant and defensive and so, so foolish. “I’m not afraid of her,” he whispered fiercely, pulling her close.

Annette pressed her forehead against his chest. Her voice cracked as she replied. “You should be.”

***

If Annette was exhausted when they finally reached the gates of Dominic late the next morning, she wasn’t sure how Felix was still awake and upright and guiding their horse. She had slept poorly, back aching against the hard, rocky ground, even with a bedroll to ostensibly offer some cushion. But when she emerged from her tiny tent shortly before dawn that morning, Felix was in the same position that she’d left him, sitting alone by the fire, facing the row of tents used by Cornelia and her soldiers, his amber eyes steely and practically glowing in the reflection of the firelight. When Annette demanded to know if he’d slept at all, he mumbled something wordless that he no doubt thought was affirming. Annette eventually gave up on her suggestions that he try to take at least a quick nap before they set out again, and they sat together wordlessly watching the sunrise, guilt flooding through Annette every time she stifled a yawn that Felix didn’t even seem to notice.

The front gates were open and ready for their arrival thanks to a messenger that Felix sent ahead to announce their approach, and Annette breathed a sigh of relief as they passed under the gates, although she full well knew they had no magical wards that could keep out Cornelia’s machinations. Felix guided the horse to the front of the group and the doors of the castle slid into view, her uncle patiently waiting for them in an eerie mirror of the last time she and Felix had returned back to the castle. The laughter and flowers seemed so hazy now that Annette almost felt that she’d made them up.

Gérald stood talking to a woman about his age, so intent on their conversation that she was the one who first noticed the approaching horses, turning and giving a sudden smile that transformed her entire face. She was tall and graceful, her movements quick but intentional. Her hair was pinned back, but a few ringlets escaped to frame her face, and their swing provided a contrasting movement as she turned towards them. Annette had read her share of books with princesses with “chestnut curls” – to her, these were the curls of those picture books. Her nose was distinctive and her smile was easy and her eyes cast a wide sweep on the approaching retinue before settling in on Felix and Annette. Even from a distance, Annette detected a slight change in expression that made her feel uncomfortably as if she couldn’t keep secrets about her or Felix or her  _ and _ Felix, even if she wanted to. She didn’t want to.

“Please tell me that’s like a third cousin of yours here for the wedding and not another powerful sorceress who wants us dead,” Felix muttered in her ear, the first time he’d spoken for the better part of an hour.

“Wrong on all counts,” Annette said back, not looking at him. “Quick, let me down.”

She had more or less thrown herself off the horse before Felix had a chance to even dismount, let along offer her his hand, and he clumsily grasped at her shoulders to try to give her some stability as she awkwardly landed on the ground. Annette shook off his hands and his concerns in equal measure and ran forward, her smile of greeting turning into a laugh turning into a giddy cry of “Mother!” before she’d even reached the woman. Fantine Dominic scooped her up into her arms, warm and strong and real and smelling like flowers and home.

“How long have you been here?” Annette asked, pulling out of the hug and rubbing at her eyes, not wanting to mar the reunion with tears.

“I arrived yesterday,” Fantine said, reaching out to fuss with Annette’s riding cloak, then moving to straighten her hair. She’d never been one for keeping still very long; she always seemed to move from one project to the next at a speed that Annette had to run to keep up with. “Gérald said you were helping Cornelia with some Empire business, how did that go?” she frowned, running her hand across a cut on Annette’s forehead now. “Is that where these scrapes came from? Goddess above, you’d think she’d have the sense to keep the mages on the back lines.”

“It’s . . . it’s a long story,” Annette said, casting a suspicious glance at her uncle, wondering how much he had actually told her mother. “Perhaps it would be better if we talk inside.”

“Yes, Fantine, maybe you should head inside,” Gérald said, breaking in to the conversation for the first time. “It looks like Cornelia’s heading this way but maybe – I’ll try to distract her.”

He strode off towards Cornelia and her battalion, passing Felix, who had managed to pass his horse off to a stablehand. They didn’t acknowledge each other.

“Where’s he off to?” Felix asked as he walked up to Annette.

“I think he’s trying to keep Cornelia from bothering us,” Annette’s mother replied cheerfully.

“Great, he’s finally useful,” Felix muttered. He then blushed as he looked from Annette to Fantine, his eyes widening at some family likeness that Annette had never tapped into when she looked into the mirror. “Sorry,” he stuttered. “I’m – I should probably introduce –”

“Mother,” Annette cut in, saving Felix from himself. “Maybe I present my fiancé, Felix Hugo Fraldarius. Felix, this is my mother, Lady Fantine Dominic.” Felix bowed stiffly, and Fantine dropped her slightly outstretched hand before he had a chance to realize he had neglected to take it. She smiled at him broadly.

“It’s lovely to finally meet you, Felix,” her mother said. “Annette’s told me so much about you, I feel as if I know you already.”

Annette blushed. She had certainly told her mother about all of her friends from her academy days, and a good portion of people who weren’t her friends at all. She didn’t see why she had to make it sound like Felix was a special case. Felix, however, raised an eyebrow, which was practically a smile for him, and replied in a flat deadpan, “I’m delighted to hear that, Lady Dominic. All good things, I hope?”

“Not a one!” Fantine said brightly, squeezing the back of Annette’s shoulder with a fond smile. “Tell me, have you gotten less villainous in the past year, or has she just gotten used to you?”

“Um,” said Felix.

“You don’t have to answer that,” Annette interrupted. “I don’t know what she’s talking about. Should we all go inside?”

“Seiros, who healed your eye, Felix?” Fantine continued as if both of them had given normal and acceptable answers and the conversation was continuing at a normal and acceptable place. “Annette dear, that wasn’t you, right? Your work isn’t so slapdash.” She didn’t bother asking why Felix had a black eye in the first place.

“It wasn’t me! Isn’t it terrible? I don’t know where he gets his healers from!” Annette said defensively. She turned to Felix, looking up at him with concern. “Did you  _ want _ me to try to fix it, Felix? I can do a better job.”

“I think I should put the horses away,” Felix said. “Long ride. Great meeting you, Lady Dominic. Your daughter is very – um – I’m so glad the wedding – well – horses might get sick if you don’t look after them right away.”

He dashed away, grabbing the horse from the retreating stablehand and leading it with him towards the stables. Gérald gave him a curt nod from where he was talking with Cornelia, which Felix barely returned.

“Oh, I like him,” Annette’s mother said. “Such a conversationalist.”

“Mother,” Annette whined, her voice taking on a distinct teenage edge. “You’re going to frighten him away.”

“Am I?” Fantine asked, unconcerned. “I thought I was very pleasant. And he’s not much of a match if he lets a little small talk scare him away from the altar.” She tilted her head, keeping her eyes trained on Felix’s retreating back. Annette narrowed her eyes, too, as she realized that his limp seemed to have returned and wondered how she hadn’t noticed it before. But Fantine had other things on her mind.

“Your uncle tells me that Fraldarius has offered a significant share of troops to Dukedom forces,” she said, her eyes still on Felix, not Annette. “That such an offer could turn the tides of this war.”

Annette swallowed. “I believe that’s the current plan, yes,” she said weakly.

Fantine cast a swift look downward, but Annette refused to meet her eyes. “Do you want to tell me how you feel about that, Annette?” she asked quietly.

Annette looked away from Felix, down at her feet, suddenly finding great interest in the tear in her stocking and the scrape on her knee. She’d always been better at lying to her uncle than to her mother. And she hadn’t been  _ that _ good at lying to her uncle. “I do want to tell you,” she said. She looked up, meeting her mother’s searching gaze. “I just . . . not right now,” she concluded.

“He’s handsome, but he’s not that handsome,” Fantine said slowly. “To see you capitulate to Empire forces so readily . . . there’s something else there, isn’t there?”

Annette looked away, blushing, but Fantine’s eyes and mind moved swiftly to next subject, and she grabbed Annette’s wrist and held her arm up, flipping it over so she could the back of her hand.

“And this, Annette?” she said, her eyes flicking over the fading welts spiraling down from Annette’s knuckles and receding at her wrist, a memory of dark magic-casting that Annette was hoping wouldn’t scar, even if it was fading more slowly than she was expecting. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on here?” her mother asked, lightly tracing a line that stretched angrily from the edge of Annette’s wrist and midway up her ring finger, disappearing under her engagement ring.

Annette remembered that clichéd line that every well-meaning but fallible child has heard from their parent at some point in their lives –  _ I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed _ . Her mother was neither. She just sounded worried, and as Annette swung her eyes up from her splotched skin to meet her mother’s gaze, she saw only soft, insistent concern, and it washed over her like a wave. Annette started to reply, but she slammed her free hand over her mouth as a choked sob came out instead of an answer. Her mother’s hands were at her shoulders now, instead, pulling her close, leading her away.

“Maybe some tea, first, what do you think?” she said, her voice soft and soothing. “I think I saw apple blend in the kitchen.” And she didn’t tell Annette that she shouldn’t cry, or she shouldn’t worry, or that things would turn out all right, but apple blend tea suddenly seemed close enough to any of those things. As Annette’s mother ushered her through the front door and into the main hall, it almost felt like home again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m a simple woman: I see two wizards, I want them to duel.
> 
> I guess we’re getting to the point where I actually have to pay attention to a timeline for the wedding? (Some would say that this point should have been “at the beginning of the fic, when I first started writing.” Those people are overachievers and nerds and I will be stealing their lunch money after 4th period.) At the end of this chapter we’re 4 days out from the wedding. At the start of the next we’ll be 3 days out. See! I pay attention sometimes. This is all, of course, barring disaster, which would be a foolish thing to bar, given Annette’s track record. And Felix, actually. Bring an actual healer the next time you plan to challenge shadowy randos to fist fights in the forest, you absolute turnip.
> 
> Thanks for all your lovely comments and theories and hellos and promises you’ll read the next chapter; it was really lovely to read them this last week. Writing is a lonely hobby in the best of circumstances, and chapter 15 out of 25 kind of feelings like screaming into a void with no actual plot (or too much plot?) and I have reached the stage of quarantine where I cry alone on my couch at the first five minutes of any Pixar movie, including Cars. So like. It’s nice to know you’re out there. And that you like Claude. I kind of assumed you all liked Claude, but the confirmation is nice.
> 
> Okay, I’ve talked your ears off enough! Go watch A Bug’s Life or something, it’s the one that made me cry the most this week (the ants are so much stronger than they realize, you guys). [ Follow me on twitter](https://twitter.com/Rose3Writes) if you want to say hello before the next update. Hugs and kisses (from 6 feet away)!


	16. Felix Offers Assisstance

Felix hated when Ingrid was right. For one thing, he was a sore loser. For another, Ingrid was a sore winner. Felix had avoided such unpleasantness by either concluding that Ingrid was wrong about things (most often, the usefulness of knighthoods) or that she approached things from such a bizarre and alien perspective that they would never see eye to eye (most recently, the usefulness of Sylvain). They stayed best friends by never settling arguments, never apologizing, and never admitting they were wrong. It had worked for two decades and Felix didn’t plan on stopping now.

But he had to admit, staring down at the ledgers and lists before him, that she might have been right that he should have paid a bit more attention in class at the officer’s academy.

“The bulk of Fraldarius forces should remain in Faerghus, regardless,” he said slowly, looking over at Gérald, who was looking at a map of Fódlan with an expression that looked about as miserable as Felix felt. They would have little chance to finalize negotiations after the wedding, Gérald reasoned, so he was eager to have a clear plan for troop distribution in place before Annette and Felix left for Fraldarius.

It had been a tedious discussion, made more frustrating for Felix by his knowledge that it was largely an intellectual exercise, in reality. He had no intention of actually sending Fraldarius troops to Dominic after he’d grabbed Annette with one hand and her father with the other and fled the scene as quickly as Annette could run in wedding shoes. (He supposed they would have to grab her mother now, as well. It was a good thing Annette had two hands.) But obviously, Gérald didn’t know that. And so they entered hour three of supply negotiations, and Felix felt that Ingrid would probably be smiling at him, both proud and smug, if she were here to see how he was doing. The thought did not actually cheer him up at all.

Gérald frowned at the map, glancing between it and the scribbles of numbers and notes that he’d been working on all afternoon. “The majority of Dukedom defense will be northern, it’s true,” he said. “But we may need to reconsider if Prince Dimitri turns his army towards Enbarr.”

It felt strange to hear him use the title; Cornelia certainly didn’t, and Felix rarely did, himself. Felix frowned at the map, as well “Well, he’s certainly not turned towards Enbarr yet,” he said, tapping at Galatea with the tip of his quill. “And if he has any success in Fhridiad, even a partial victory, I’ll want as many troops in Fraldarius as I can spare. You have some stake in this too, Baron Dominic. I would like to ensure Annette is secure in her new home, you know.”

“Yes, that does seem to be your priority,” Gérald said absently, crossing off a few numbers and rewriting them in a different column. There was no malice in his voice but Felix still looked at him sharply.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked, and there was plenty of malice in  _ his _ question.

“Your business in your territory,” Gérald said, still not looking away form his rearranged figures. “I take it things went well?”

“It was fine,” Felix said, taking up a ledger of his own. “Took less time than I thought.” He didn’t have a good reason to be writing anything down, so he just moved some troops over from the column for north Fraldarius to the column for south Fraldarius and promised himself he’d remember to switch it back later.

“Odd timing, isn’t it?” Gérald continued, and his voice did sound strained, now that Felix was listening for it. “You’re here for a month and you aren’t needed back in Fraldarius, and yet this business crops up suddenly and can’t wait a few days until the wedding is concluded? Running territories is such a fickle ordeal, is it not?”

“Hmm,” said Felix, his mouth set in a steady frown, which he hoped was unreadable.

“Also fortunate that your business aligned so cleanly with joining back up with Cornelia – with men at your side, this time,” Gérald added. “Although the way she acted at dinner last night, it doesn’t seem she was particularly grateful for your offer of troops.”

“She has a lot on her mind, I suppose,” Felix said. “But she can hardly think of them as a threat – they did her and her troops no harm.” Felix had sent his battalion back to Fraldarius that morning, and a twinge of concern still lingered that he was sacrificing necessary protection. But Gérald was right – the introduction of Fraldarius troops, under Felix’s command, had introduced a tension into the conflicting factions at the Dominic Estate that had made Felix feel uneasy rather than comforted. He’d won one stalemate with Cornelia that week; he wasn’t about to press his luck throwing his weight around further.

Felix looked up and realized Gérald was staring at him – had possibly been staring at him for some time.

“I wish you’d trust me,” Gérald said, solemnly and slowly. “Annette doesn’t, not anymore, but her loyalty to the Kingdom makes her blind to all reason. I’m as invested in her protection as you are, boy.”

“I – I don’t doubt that,” Felix said, and the most surprising thing was he realized he was being honest. There was a time when he had doubted that, very much, but he was inclined to believe Annette’s uncle cared about her, even if Felix’s life goal continued to be to undermine the man at every available opportunity.

“And yet you don’t trust me,” Gérald insisted.

“Are you bargaining for more troops?” Felix asked, gesturing impatiently at his careful notes on promised supplies and battalions. “I’m offering you the pride of my territory – what more trust do you want?”

Gérald sighed, “I’m not asking for more troops; your offer is generous. I just feel we could be more of – well – this feels like a transaction, not a future alliance.”

“Show me the difference, and I’ll try to follow suit,” Felix muttered, reaching for the map and beginning to roll it back up. “But if you’re so concerned, then you first. What are you trusting  _ me  _ with, right now?”

Gérald sighed. “Perhaps you’re right,” he murmured, moving another number from one column to the next.

They sat in silence like that for too long, the only sound the scratching of Gérald’s quill and Felix’s heartbeat in his ears. It was not companionable.

“Well, nonetheless, I’m glad you brought Annette home safely,” Gérald said, shuffling his papers into a neater stack, a sure sign that business was about to conclude. “To lose her would be – one must be prepared for sacrifices in war, but there are some things I could not bear.” He offered Felix a hesitant, half-hearted smile, which Felix did not return. “I fear I will not be able to do as much for her father, once you have left,” Gérald added quietly. “My only hope is that if we hasten the victory of the Empire, perhaps Cornelia will lose interest in petty retaliation. Reshaping the continent will be busy work, after all. The small concerns of a minor territory cannot be a top priority.”

“I think petty retaliation is always a top priority for some people,” Felix muttered, and Gérald’s gave a small noise that might have been agreement.

Felix followed Gérald out of the meeting room, wondering vaguely how long he should hold onto the notes he just took. He figured they might be a useful record to consult at some point, assuming he could actually remember what anything meant. It would be easy enough to throw them in the bottom of his luggage and forget about them until he unpacked back in Fraldarius, preferably with Annette there to laugh at his terrible notetaking and her newfound freedom.

“Annette wanted me to ask you,” Gérald said as they walked down the hallway towards the main foyer together. “If you had a preference on the carriage you took back to Fraldarius after the wedding. We have a stagecoach and a barouche.”

Felix wrinkled his nose. “Annette asked you to ask me?” he said skeptically.

Gérald shrugged. “She said you might have an opinion.”

Felix had very little opinions on most wedding decisions, and Annette knew this. Still, he was beginning to suspect she  _ also  _ had very few opinions on wedding decisions, based on how her right eye had twitched during dinner last night when Cornelia asked her about the exact style of lace in her wedding veil. (There was still a cut above her eye, during dinner. Felix wondered if she had found someone to heal it by now. He still wondered how she had gotten it in the first place.)

“I guess . . . which one is easier to drive?” Felix asked, trying, for Annette, to have an opinion on stagecoaches versus barouches.

Gérald frowned, evidently just as unprepared for carriage opinions as anyone else in the castle. “I guess the barouche would have less horses, that probably makes it – you won’t be driving it yourself, son. We’ll send a coachman with you. I don’t think Annette wants to ride all the way to Fraldarius by herself.”

“The barouche is fine, I’m sure,” Felix said, feeling his entire face flush wildly and wishing he could feasibly come up with an excuse to walk immediately in the opposite direction. “You know, I think I left my favorite quill in your study. I should probably double check that –”

“Yooo-hoooo! Gérald, darling, are you busy right now?” Cornelia’s voice echoed off the stone hallways in a way that made Felix’s skin crawl from multiple directions. Felix wondered if he had cursed himself by wishing for a subject change and silently vowed to never want things ever again, just to be safe. Cornelia sauntered into view as Felix looked down the hall. She was wearing a dress patterned after peacock feathers, bright blues and greens swirling as she walked down the hall to them, her heels clicking across the floor.

“Hello, Cornelia,” Gérald said, and Felix gave a slight bow to avoid having to speak. “I trust you’ve had a productive morning?” Cornelia had locked herself in the castle’s audience chamber with her remaining men and a series of messengers directly after breakfast. Felix had been tempted to try to get in on the meeting, but in the end he realized it was probably for the best that Gérald had dragged him away – at least this way Cornelia couldn’t ask any more last minute missions of him.

Now she gave him a brilliant smile, venomous and sparkling. “Wonderfully so. It’s quaint how hardworking your messengers are, here – absolutely ingenious how they compensate for a lack of fliers and training.”

“I’m so glad to hear that, Cornelia,” Gérald said flatly.

Cornelia clapped her hands together, indicating that niceties – such as they were – were concluded, and that real business could begin. “So,” she said, looking between the two men. “I’m sending some troops back to Fhirdiad today with more specific instructions, and I’ll be able to travel there after the wedding with a coterie of my most trusted men. I imagine this will allow me to make good time – perhaps even better than you and your bride, Felix dear, and I  _ know _ you two will be eager to get to Fraldarius before nightfall.”

“Good for you,” Felix grumbled, avoiding looking at her arching eyebrows and vowing to never get married again, as long as he lived.

“Isn’t it?” Cornelia beamed at him. “Now, what I need from you, Gérald darling, is your opinion – don’t you think it would be smarter for me to send Gilbert or Geraladine or whatever name he goes by these days with my battalion today? I don't want him slowing down my party next week, and he’ll be out of your hair so much faster.”

Felix could feel Gérald stiffen slightly beside him, and he was a stiff man to begin with. “That’s an interesting idea, Cornelia,” he said slowly, “But may I remind you that the wedding is in three days time?”

“The wedding?” Cornelia blinked a few times. “I’m not sure what he has to do with that. Unless he and Fantine are planning to renew their vows at the same time – which I guess wouldn’t be the  _ worst _ idea for those two.”

“It was my niece’s only wish that her father walk her down the aisle at her wedding. I gave her my word,” Gérald rumbled, and Felix’s eyes flickered to him quickly, taking in his reddening face and clenched fists, even as his voice remained even and measured.

“It’s very important to Annette that both of her parents be there at the wedding,” Felix added, although his voice, as usual, tended to exacerbate tension rather than to resolve it. “If it’s such a burden for him to travel with you, I’m sure Gérald is more than happy to continue to keep him here in Dominic. Or Fraldarius troops can escort him to you in a few weeks time.” He felt his own fingers flex, twitching towards where he should have kept a sword, were he not on a damn diplomatic mission. “I would hate for such a simple matter of timing to ruin my wedding day, Cornelia,” he said, letting the threatening edge of his voice take the forefront.

Cornelia looked at him with wide eyes, opting to go for innocence over malice, or at least, malicious innocence. “I must have missed things while I was gone,” she said, her face the picture of confusion. “Are you holding the ceremony in the castle dungeons? The last I checked he was reticent to leave them. Unless you’re planning on dragging him down the aisle in chains, which would certainly be memorable. But Miss Dominic has a way of making things memorable even without such dramatics, now, doesn’t she?”

Felix took a step forward, meaningless and threatening at the same time, but Gérald cleared his throat before Felix could either ruin everything or finally make himself useful. “It’s true my brother has had some . . . hesitations about the match,” he said solemnly. “But that’s in the past now. Fantine has always had a way with words, you know. And it really is the only thing Annette requested for her wedding – besides, I believe, two different kinds of cake at the reception.” He turned to Felix, suddenly remembering. “Annette also said you might have an opinion on the second cake,” he said, as if this were equally as urgent as his brother’s imprisonment.

“I hate all cake,” said Felix glumly.

Gérald nodded. “We’ll go with vanilla, then,” he said.

“Is this really the time to be having this conversation?” Cornelia said lightly, her jaw only slightly clenched.

“We probably should have had it earlier, but both Felix and Annette were a little busy these past few days, weren’t they?” Gérald said, looking back at her with something akin to a glare. “You wanted my opinion and now you have it – send your troops in whatever formation you want, but Gustave will be at the wedding. This may be the last time our family is together; war is so uncertain, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Cornelia agreed, her smile at odds with the sobriety of such a statement. “Although one thing is for certain – I cannot  _ wait _ to see this wedding, don’t you agree? I’m so glad I decided to come back to watch the proceedings.”

“I’m sure your presence will only make the day brighter,” Gérald agreed unconvincingly.

Felix’s frown deepened. “I should go check on Annette; she said she was making ‘every possible final arrangement’ this morning, which – I don’t think she meant for it to sound that dire,” he said, moving to once again try to detach himself from diplomatic conversations, which he was not getting any better at.

“Oh, don’t let me keep you two!” sang Cornelia. “I’m off to make some final arrangements myself – battle arrangements, but you know, we can’t all spend our mornings with flowers and table settings!”

She was gone in a swish of jewel-tone fabric and passive-aggressive judgment. Felix stared after her in a kind of awe that he didn’t plan to unpack, let alone articulate. Instead, he turned to Gérald and changed the subject.

“I’m glad to hear Gilbert will be joining us at the wedding,” he said, keeping his voice calm. “What did Fantine say to him to get him to agree?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Gérald said, watching Cornelia disappear around a corridor corner. “My plan is to throw them together the night before the wedding so he doesn’t have time to change his mind.”

“Oh,” Felix said. “I misunderstood. You made it sound as if –”

“Yes, boy, I know how I made it sound,” Gérald said impatiently. “I trust you can make it sound the same.”

He was gone before Felix could reply.

***

Felix had little else to do with his afternoon, and so he decided he actually would go check in on Annette. At the very least, it was nice to have said something honest in the past twenty-four hours. He wandered down the hallways of the Dominic Castle, feeling the eyes of Annette’s ancestors watching him from their portraits. Annette often spoke of them as if they were forming opinions about her – judgmental ones, usually – and while he could not say he had ever felt the same about the flattened and styled paintings of Fraldarius that had watched over him from childhood, he felt that Annette had somehow bewitched him, once again, so that he could only see her own family as ghosts of the past with opinions that intruded aggressively into the present. Her great-aunts (she had dozens of them) seemed particularly disappointed in her choice of suitor as he walked by them. He imagined they would have wanted her to marry for love, or for money, or for status, or for anything real, so he was undoubtedly a sham by any metric.

“Take it up with her – she’s the one who accepted,” he muttered to a particularly severe-looking Antoinette Dominic, who might have been Annette’s namesake in some bastardization. Antoinette Dominic looked unimpressed with this defense, and Felix shoved his hands in his pockets and stalked down the hallway without looking around anymore, blushing to have been caught in such a ridiculous action, even if it was only by a painting.

Annette had made her home in the library for much of her stay here, but Felix had heard her mention to her mother at breakfast that a particular parlor at the east side of the castle would make for a pleasant morning, and he tried his luck there, first. He wandered into the parlor, uncertain and still thoroughly chastised by Great Aunt Antoinette, and his eyes lit upon Fantine Dominic, sitting on one of the comfy, overstuffed couches, intently embroidering something large and unruly. It wasn’t until he was halfway into the room that he realized the crucial problem that Annette was nowhere to be found, but by then, Fantine had looked up at the footsteps and smiled brightly at him. A hasty retreat, then, was out of the question.

“Good afternoon, Felix. Is your work with Gérald done for now?” she asked pleasantly. Her eyes were bright and intense, an identical shade of dark brown to her hair, but as wide and piercing as Annette’s when she focused them on Felix. In their one conversation, which Felix was pretty sure he had more or less messed up entirely, he had had the unshakable impression that she was looking straight through him and finding entertainment in everything she observed. She had all of the sharpness of Annette’s frantic glances, but none of the uncertainty to temper her findings. Annette always looked to find a reason to worry. Felix wasn’t sure the same was the case for her mother, who merely looked vaguely amused as Felix took a sudden step back from her before realizing he couldn’t just leave a room because Annette wasn’t there, and was left frozen in place between advancing and retreating.

“Um . . . yes,” Felix said, realizing that he probably did need to say something. Feeling that this was perhaps not enough, he added, “Yes.”

Fantine beamed at him, and moved over on the couch, which did little good, as the fabric she was working with billowed out around her in every direction. “Are you busy right now?” she asked him. “You can help me wrangle these table runners, if you would like. They’re going to be very long tables, I guess!”

Felix gingerly stepped deeper into the room and took a seat on the far edge of the couch. Fantine put her needle and thread between her lips momentarily – a move Felix could swear he’d seen Annette do with a quill dozens of times before – and gathered up the ends of the fabric before dropping them rather unceremoniously in Felix’s lap. She resumed her work, and they sat together in silence, Felix holding the fabric in place and adjusting as she pulled it towards her and Fantine darting a quick and elegant embroidery pattern lengthwise down the fabric.

Felix strongly suspected he was neither needed nor useful for this job.

“These look. . . nice,” he said after a good amount of time had passed. It seemed like the sort of thing to say.

He was relieved when Fantine looked pleased at the compliment – he had a mixed track record with her daughter. “Don’t they, though? I thought it might liven up the banquet tables at the reception to have just a little something extra,” she said, tying off a stitch and quickly rethreading her needle. “Details like that make such a difference, don’t you think?”

“Where’s Annette?” Felix asked, unspooling more fabric to give Fantine some slack as she worked.

“She’s having a lie down,” Fantine said pleasantly, zigzagging a complicated loop that made little forward progress before resuming her path down the edge of the fabric. “They spent  _ quite _ a lot of time on her in the infirmary this morning – I really don’t approve of whatever tactician Cornelia employs these days, there’s no reason a mage should have that many scrapes and scraps if she was being deployed properly. And you know how tired healing magic can make you. I told Annette we’d have a much more productive afternoon if she went and took a nap.”

“And that – that worked?” Felix asked. He’d certainly had his share of conversations trying to convince a dead-tired Annette that she should perhaps not be working anymore, but he couldn’t think of a single time she’d actually listened to him. Framing it in terms of future productivity was a tactic he’d never considered; Annette loved efficiency.

Fantine smiled serenely. “It works if you’re her mother,” she said, tugging another stitch into place with a quick flick of her fingers. “Annette always did like getting letters from you, you know. After you two graduated.”

“I thought you said she didn’t have anything good to say about me,” Felix said, which he could imagine was true. The first time he’d walked in on Annette in the library after the class’s uncertain and tumultuous reunion at Garreg Mach, she had thrown a book at his head for “sneaking up on her,” and then gotten mad at him for crumpling the pages of the book when he handed it back to her.

“She said you were a villainous bully who wouldn’t leave her alone and didn’t write  _ nearly _ enough, if I remember correctly,” Fantine said. “I’m putting several threads together here. You were quite the standard against all the suitors she turned down – as soon as she would mutter that some poor lad was ‘even worse than Felix,’ I knew he might as well pack his bags and leave the next morning.”

“Annette had – there were other suitors?” Felix asked incredulously. She’d certainly never brought it up to him, and he thought he had pretty good tabs on the wide array of topics she and Mercie gossiped about over dinner, if only because of how often Annette would drag him into the conversation as an impartial judge.

“Oh yes, she had her hands full. Less as the war went on, I suppose,” Fantine replied cheerfully, as if this wasn’t one thousands daggers of information aimed directly at Felix’s heart. “None of them got as far as a proposal, of course. You might have set some sort of speed record as far as that goes.” Fantine’s eyes brightened at a realization. “You know what, Felix, Annette  _ did _ once say you were ‘frighteningly and obnoxiously efficient.’ That’s rather a compliment, isn’t it! And she was right in the end, wasn’t she?”

“I . . . yes?” Felix said, barely hearing her at the end. He was torn between tracking down these suitors to challenge them to duels on principle and finding Annette immediately to let her know that she could marry anyone she wanted if he was standing in the way of something, and neither of these were actually feasible options, so he just stayed where he was, passing yards of cloth to Annette’s mother and wishing he was literally anywhere else or that Annette was here. He clutched at the fabric a little too tightly until he realized he had to let go entirely – Fantine had reached the end at last. Taking the last bit from Felix, she ended the embroidery with a series of dramatic, aimless loops, and cut the final thread.

“There we go!” she sang brightly, throwing the tablerunner out with a dramatic flourish. Felix honestly couldn’t see much difference between an embroidered tablerunner and a plain one, but he tried to arrange his features into something that indicated that he was pleased with how things had turned out and supportive of all of Fantine’s design decisions.

“It's very loopy,” he said, and Fantine beamed at him.

“Isn’t it, though?” she said, as she began the arduous process of folding the long cloth into a neat and manageable stack. “And it went so much faster than I thought it would! You were a big help, Felix, thank you.”

Felix knew for a fact that this was a lie. “Sure thing,” he said, nervously shifting to cross his arms now that he didn’t have yards of fabric to hide behind.

“So much time until dinner, but if Annette’s still sleeping, I don't want to wake her,” Fantine said thoughtfully. She stared at the looping embroidery she had just completed for a moment, and the cast a sidelong glance at Felix. “Annette says that you’re quite good at sparring matches,” she said, her voice just barely rising at the end, the hint of a question.

“She’s right,” said Felix. He saw no point in false modesty.

“We have an afternoon ahead of us,” Fantine said, putting the fabric down on the table in front of her and resting her sewing kit on top of it. “Would you care for a match?”

Felix blinked. “A match against whom?” he asked, surprised. He hadn’t thought that Fantine had traveled with any soldiers, and she didn’t seem in a position to organize a tournament among Gérald’s own men.

“Against me, silly!” Fantine said with a laugh, standing up and brushing her hands together. “I was also quite good at sparring, when I was a student. I won several tournaments at the Royal School of Sorcery, you know.” Felix did not have time to process any of this information, as Fantine was standing in the door, looking at him expectantly.

“I – ” Felix started, but he had no plan for finishing the sentence.

“Don’t worry, Felix dear, if Annette’s wakes up, I’m sure the training grounds are one of the first places she’ll look for you,” Fantine said, as if that was anywhere near the top of the list for Felix’s worries. She gave him one final smile, which he found both reassuring and somehow terrifying. “This will be such fun!” she added with a laugh before turning to walk out the door.

Not knowing what else to do, Felix followed after her.

***

Fantine chatted pleasantly all the way to the training grounds – about the wedding, about Annette, about their plans for the future. Felix barely heard what she said and was only somewhat certain he’d given correct replies. If he’d accidentally promised to send their firstborn child to boarding school in Sreng, he’d have to take it up with Annette later. For now, he nodded at all of Fantine’s upward inflections, his thoughts preoccupied with wondering whether this was a trap, or a test, or some long standing Dominic marriage ritual that Annette really should have told him about. 

“Ahh, the old stomping grounds!” Fantine sang as they walked into the training yard, which was fortunately empty for the moment. “I keep telling Gérald he needs to update them, but nothing about this castle ever really changes.”

“They’re serviceable,” says Felix, finding the topic strangely comforting in its familiarity. “That far practice dummy tilts at an angle, but it’s nothing too bad.”

“You’ll have to spend summers here, once the war is over,” Fantine said with an air of having settled the matter. She walked back to the weapons rack. “You’re swords, aren’t you, dear? Annette mentioned some tournament wins.” She pulled a wooden sword and a dulled axe off the wall and walked back to him, swinging the sword blithely in a manner that Felix would have disparaged as “reckless” if he were speaking to anyone but Annette’s mother.

This was the best possible opportunity to point out literally any other afternoon activity – a walk, perhaps, or a game of chess – but instead Felix blurted out, “You’re using axes? Not magic?”

Fantine laughed. “Well, I’ll  _ mostly _ be using magic, but I find an axe can be useful for blocking.” She handed him the sword and gave the axe a practice swing, which was less reckless and somehow more concerning. “It’s not my specialty but I’m not bad in a pinch. Who do you think taught Annette how to swing an axe?” she added cheerfully.

Felix did not answer that question, because he had always figured Gilbert had taught Annette how to swing an axe. Now that he thought on it, he wasn’t sure why he’d given him so much credit.

“Magic battles work differently than physical ones,” he remarked, changing the subject – or rather, refocusing it back to a conversation that was more comfortable.

“It’s easy to modify the rules,” Fantine said, smiling. “Three hits is a win, be they hits from magic or hits from weapons. Don't worry,” she added over her shoulder, taking her place at the center of the ring. “I won’t aim for your face.”

Felix did not feel reassured by any of this, but he figured he could get a couple of light hits in, or suffer through a couple of miniature tornadoes, if it meant maintaining a good relationship with at least one of his temporary in-laws. Mages weren’t supposed to duel unless they could control the force of their magic to be about impact rather than harm – if Fantine was experienced in tournaments, there was little danger of her hurting him by accident. And his sword was dull enough that there was little danger of him hurting her by accident, as well.

There was a great danger of Annette hurting both of them, on purpose, but only if she found out. All the more reason, Felix figured, to get the duel over with as quickly as possible.

“On your count,” he said, taking his place across from Fantine, feeling a familiar rush of adrenaline that was only slightly complicated by his complete lack of competitive spirit for once.

Fantine smiled and raised her axe. It hovered inches above her shoulder, but then she lowered it. Felix wondered for a second of optimism if she was about to change her mind.

“What do I get if I win?” she asked pleasantly, instead.

“I beg your pardon?” Felix said, somewhat confused that Annette’s mother was not charging at him with an axe, which was not a sentiment he had expected to feel when he woke up that morning.

“I’m just thinking, it might be fun,” she said, as if that explained everything. “Some prize for the winner. If you win, for example, I’ll put in a good word for you with Annette.”

“Do I – do I need a good word with Annette?” Felix asked, thinking that from Fantine’s vantage point, at least, he was in a pretty good position as far as things went.

She gave him an enigmatic smile. “It couldn’t hurt,” she said. “Now, what will  _ you _ give  _ me _ ?

“I . . . I have some nice swords?” Felix offered, and then cursed himself for saying that, because he had no intention of giving them away.

“I prefer axes – and smaller stakes,” Fantine said. She twirled the axe in a circle, an impressive trick, even if it was just a trick. “You’re a popular guy around here, aren’t you, Felix? Beloved by the soldiers and such?” she asked.

“Not something I'm usually accused of, no,” Felix said. “But we’ve had some successful missions.” He was grateful Annette was not there to correct him – she certainly had a different definition of “successful” than he did.

Fantine evidently was inclined to side with his evaluation. “I’m not surprised – I'm sure you’re quite experienced at inspiring troops at this point,” she said, and Felix had to bite back sarcasm. Running at your mother-in-law with a sword was evidently strangely permissible these days, but rolling your eyes at her seemed a bridge too far. Fantine continued, “What do you say – if I win, you convince that surly prison guardsman to let me talk to my husband tonight. He was  _ quite rude _ to me when I first arrived, but he’d probably listen to you – a Duke and all.”

Felix didn’t drop his sword, which was a surprise, but he lost his concentration and his stance, staring at Fantine dumbfounded for a moment. “I – I’m not sure that will be necessary, Lady Dominic,” he said. “Gérald told me that he was arranging a meeting the day after tomorrow – did he not tell you?”

“Oh, he did!” Fantine said with a reassuring smile. “But you see, I don’t want Gérald to be there. I’d rather this be a private conversation. Or at least, one without Gérald.”

“Why . . . why are you asking  _ me _ to help you?” Felix said, finally. He was pretty sure Annette would be able to bribe the guard, maybe, or that one of the other staff members of the castle, who surely knew and loved Fantine as a prominent member of the noble family, could help her get into the dungeons.

Fantine’s eyes glinted, not quite connected to her smile anymore. “Because I think I’ll win this,” she said. “And I have nothing left to lose.”

She cast the first bolt of magic without a countdown, but Felix dodged it on instinct. Somewhere in the back of his mind, his reflexes were unsurprised that Fantine Dominic did not play by the rules. 

The opening bid was on Fantine’s side, as she had the advantage of distance casting and Felix had the disadvantage of not knowing what spells she had up her sleeve. She got off two more shots of fire before Felix was within striking distance, one which he easily ducked as it swung wide above him and one which he misjudged, not quite avoiding. Flame grazed his ear, a peculiar dulled magic that was more heat that burning, but still caused him to wince in pain, smoke and sulfur filling his nostrils and settling into his hair.

“That’s one hit for me,” Fantine said, and she immediately threw up her axe to block Felix’s downward swing, a resounding crack echoing through the training grounds as they collided.

Felix frowned at the parry – it hadn’t been his hardest swing, but it hadn’t been an easy block, either. Fantine’s eyes gleamed as another tendril of flame appeared out of her palm, and she pushed it forward towards Felix with a violent backhanded slap in his direction, fire somersaulting out over her palm to chase after him. Felix somersaulted himself, rolling out of the way to avoid the incoming spell and then swinging upwards as he launched himself up to his feet. Fantine grasped the handle of her axe with both hands as she parried his upwards attack. There was another violent clatter of weapon meeting weapon. With no hands free to conjure another spell, Fantine swung the axe downwards towards Felix, switching to a physical attack as if that had been her plan all the long.

Unfortunately for Fantine, that had also been Felix’s plan all along. Rather than parry the blow of the axe, he nimbly leapt to the side. Fantine went flying past him, carried by the momentum of the axe, and Felix easily found his mark on the follow up hit.

He winced as the back of his blade bounced against Fantine’s shoulders, but as she regained her footing she laughed delightedly, swinging around to meet his gaze before he could manage another hit. Hoisting the axe up over her shoulder again, Fantine shot Felix a grin that he could only interpret as a challenge, daring him to attack again.

Instead, Felix darted a few steps backwards, determined to get his next hit in on his terms, not Fantine’s.

Her magic was different from Annette’s, he realized as he dodged another fireball, skirting to the side of the battlegrounds to force Fantine to cast at an angle. Annette was built quick and light, casting spell after spell in seemingly endless succession, never giving the enemy space to breathe or recover and never staying in the same place long enough to get hit herself. She was oddly like Felix, in that way, a creature of weightless dexterity. Fantine’s spells were not like that. She remained at a fixed point on the battlefield, pivoting to keep Felix in her sights but with both feet firmly on the ground. Her spells were hammers, powerful and intense, but they had breath between them, a slow, overpowering march forward rather than the hummingbird wings of Annette’s battle tactics.

They weren’t easier to dodge. But he had to dodge less of them. And Felix used that to his advantage, creating his own hummingbird pattern across the perimeter of the battlefield, Fantine pivoting to send fire chasing after him until he was doubling back on remnants of smoke still hanging thick in the air. It took less time than he’d expected for Fantine to begin to predict the pattern, sending the flares slightly ahead of him, anticipating his footsteps so that the fire almost singed him. With a deep breath that he instantly regretted thanks to the smoke, Felix dashed forward and to the side. Fantine was ready, blocking his opening strike with her axe. Felix feinted a second blow, following the same clockwise direction he had used to approach her, and Fantine overcorrected on the block, following his sword a little too far to her right. When he switched easily to attack from her left, her axe swing was too slow in its follow up, and he landed another hit against her, his blade glancing off her ribcage.

“Out of three?” he asked, his voice catching as he suppressed a cough, the smoke of the battle drifting around him. He barely caught Fantine’s nod as he pivoted back again, scanning her for an opening with her axe clutched in front of her, a shield and weapon together in one.

She gave him the opening, but not the way he expected or wanted. Her mouth set in a determined line that still might have had the traces of a warped sort of delight, Fantine threw her axe to the side. It stuck into the training ground, the handle aloft at and angle. And now Fantine was backing away from him, her hands glowing with a dark, purplish light.

Felix charged forward, his sword drawn and ready to strike. Fantine threw out her nondominant hand, darkening light still gathering at her other fingertips. A shockwave flew out in front of her, and Felix stumbled back as the ground underneath him warped, his leg suddenly giving out underneath him. Felix pulled himself to balance on one knee before his eyes were drawn to the purple light, now balanced in both of Fantine’s hands. Felix struggled to his feet, his shin aching with the sudden change in air pressure and mismatched weight he’d inadvertently put on it. Slowly, the light – or darkness – rose from Fantine’s hands, forming into a handful of individual purple orbs, and then elongating at their ends, turning into pointed spikes as they floated toward Felix. A dozen shards of negative light surrounded Felix, poised over his head from all directions, ready to fall towards him.

“Out of three,” Fantine echoed.

Felix tensed, grabbing his sword for a kind of foolish protection. If they fell on him at different speeds he’d have a chance, but he wasn’t sure he would be able to dodge a coordinated attack for this many directions. Pulling himself together, Felix balanced on one leg, ready to spring to the side, as Fantine brought her arm back to cast downward, the spikes matching the direction of her quivering wrist.

“Mother! Put those down  _ this instant _ !”

Annette’s voice had all the anger and self-righteous authority as if she’d found her mother reading through her teenage diary, but Felix still flinched when he turned and saw her marching towards the center of the training grounds, murder written on her face and a wayward curl bouncing over one ear in time to her stomping.

Fantine flexed her fingers and the spikes above Felix’s head vanished, leaving a lingering scent of rot amidst the smoke. She turned to her daughter. “Hello, Annette dear!” she said brightly. “Did you have a nice nap?”

“Mother!” Annette cried again. “You said you were going to spend the afternoon  _ embroidering table runners _ !”

“I did, didn’t I? And I did, did I not?” Fantine looked to Felix for confirmation, and Felix tore his eyes away from Annette’s rampage towards them to look back to her.

“Um,” he said helpfully.

“Felix was just so helpful with the final one that we ended up with tons of extra time,” Fantine explained. “He’s a dear.”

“So you decided to try to murder him?” Annette said, her voice cracking on ‘murder’ as she glared up at her mother. She still sounded sleepy, somewhere under the self-righteous fury. There was a thickness in her words that Felix recognized from when she would lecture him for letting her fall asleep while studying, her voice creaking from lack of use even as her brain instantly snapped into all the ways she could be useful.

“I’m fine,” Felix offered quietly. He instantly regretted his decision as Annette shot him a glare that clearly indicated she would deal with him later, and turned back to Fantine.

“No one was going to murder anyone. It was just a simple sparring match, Annette,” Fantine said, spreading her hands out in front of her reassuringly. “I know Felix enjoys sparring; your stories of tournament matches at Garreg Mach were always so exciting.”

Annette flushed a deeper shade of red, if such a thing was possible, but her eyes flickered to Fantine’s calming hands and she seized one of them, pulling Fantine’s hand forward and peering down at it.

“What spell was that?” Annette demanded, moving away from Felix’s health and relative sparring merits at a pace that made his head spin. “That was Dark Spikes, wasn’t it? I’ve read about it; the manifestation of energy is distinctive, but only the most advanced scholars have ever –”

“Yes, Annette, you always had a good eye for that,” Fantine interrupted, a hint of pride unmistakable in her voice even as it mixed with something more impatient and anxious. “It’s generally an anti-cavalry measure, but I’ve found the formation makes it useful for other situations that require broad coverage of an area.”

Felix felt as if he was listening in on one of Annette and Lysithea’s study sessions, words he technically knew being used in contexts he could barely follow. Annette, however, was for once not tempted by the promise of theoretical jargon and hypothetical application. She tapped at the back of Fantine’s hand impatiently.

“You look fine,” she said, and there was a desperation in her voice that contradicted her words. “Your hands – they’re absolutely fine.” She held up her own hands, with faded, angry red and purple lines running across her knuckles and down towards her wrists, a painful-looking injury that Felix had yet to ask her about. “Why don’t you have – you don’t dabble. That’s not dabbling. You’ve trained in this.”

Fantine took Annette’s hand, holding it up to study with a mirror of concern to Annette’s earlier actions. “Are you ready to talk about this, then?” she said. “These marks are recent – when did you learn those incantations?”

Annette snatched her hands back, stepping away from Fantine quickly. “Me? When did  _ I  _ learn? You told me my whole life that dark magic is too dangerous, and then you – you act like it was nothing! Why would you lie to me?”

Fantine closed her eyes and shook her head, and she suddenly looked very, very tired, the sparkle and energy turned off like a switch. “I told you dark magic always had a cost, and that cost was never worth what you put in,” she said. “I didn’t lie to you; I still believe that. You shouldn’t study it, Annette; it’s not worth what you pay for it.”

“Then why do  _ you _ know – you know what, never mind,” Annette cut herself off from the most logical question. “If you’re just going to speak in riddles, then I don’t have time to solve them right now.” She turned on her heel and marched over to Felix, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him away from the center of the grounds. “I’m taking my fiancé to the infirmary, now, if you don’t mind – look, you got burn marks all over him! Two days before my wedding, Mother!”

“Three,” correctly Felix, but neither woman seemed to hear him.

Fantine moved towards them, but Annette had thrown Felix behind her like a human shield, even as she dragged him after her. “Annette,” she said, her voice comforting and soft. “I don’t expect you to understand every decision I’ve made –”

“How can I, when you don't  _ tell me _ anything,” Annette snapped over her shoulder. “I’ll see you at dinner, Mother. Maybe some conversations about lace styles and flower arrangements will be more enlightening than – than whatever this is!”

Felix tried to shoot Fantine an apologetic look as they left, although he wasn’t sure what for. Mostly, he supposed, he just didn’t like to leave a sparring match at a stalemate.

***

Felix followed Annette through the castle in a daze, but not so much of a daze that he didn’t notice the grip her tiny hand had around his fingers – or the fact that this was the third Dominic he’d heard lying today.

“This isn’t the way to the infirmary,” he said, looking over his shoulder as they passed the set of stairs that would have taken them to somewhere that would treat burn marks.

“Walk it off, Fraldarius,” Annette snapped, her pace quickening just a bit. “You’ll be fine.”

“I thought you’d be angrier about the duel idea,” he confessed, holding her fingers a bit tighter as they walked.

“I just said that because I was mad; I don’t think she’d actually hurt you that badly before the wedding,” Annette said. “And if she did – it’s your fault for not dodging!”

“No, I mean,” Felix said, drawing even with Annette as they walked, despite her quick steps. “With me. Fighting your mother. Who I just met.” He trailed off, not sure why he was trying to paint this as a bad idea – Annette could come up with reasons that he was a villain without his help.

She wasn’t interested in doing that today, however, and she shrugged with the first hint of apathy he’d seen in a while. “Mother used to spar sometimes with my uncle, when I was growing up,” she said. “With Father, too, before he – well, she’s pretty good, is my point! We’ve never been a territory for balls and festivals, out here in Dominic, but the summer tournaments were always a highlight. Besides,” she shot Felix a glance. “It looked like she was going to win, so I don’t really have to worry about her, do I?”

“I might’ve been able to dodge,” Felix muttered, but he dropped the conversation as he realized they had arrived at Annette’s intended destination – which was, to his surprise, his bedroom door. Annette looked at him impatiently, like he should have expected this, and Felix dug into his pocket and pulled out the door key without thinking, unlocking the door and following after her as she padded into his room.

“You still haven’t cleaned, you know,” she said, looking around. It was true – Felix hadn’t even bothered hanging most of his clothes up in the wardrobe, despite the fact he’d been in Dominic for a month by now – but he didn’t know why she needed to bring it up. He gave her a sour wince by way of replying, and Annette relented, seeming to crumple slightly. “This is okay, right?” she asked, almost timidly. “I just – I don’t want to go back to my room right now. I don’t want anyone to be able to find me. I don’t think they’d look for me here.”

“Your fiancé’s bedroom? Days before your wedding?” Felix clarified. “I feel like we’ve had this conversation before; it’s actually probably the first place people would expect you to –”

“Ughhh, you’re the  _ worst _ sometimes, Felix,” Annette scowled. “If you want to, I don’t know, guard your virtuous reputation or whatever, you don’t have to stay. I just need a pillow to scream into for the next forty-five minutes.”

“I never said that,” Felix muttered under his breath, but Annette had already marched over to his bed and flopped facedown, grabbing a pillow as promised and dragging it towards her. Felix was glad he’d made his bed that morning, at least. Annette didn’t scream into the pillow – at least, unless she screamed much more quietly than Felix would have expected – but she did bunch it together and bury her entire face in it, curling up on herself, elbows against knees.

Felix relented – if Annette hadn’t seemed so miserable, she would have looked awfully cute right now. He walked over to the bed, which had even more awkwardly become the focal point of the room now that Annette was curled up on it like a bedraggled kitten, and took a seat near the foot, leaving a gap between him and Annette. The bed dipped as he sat, but Annette didn’t move, except to nestle her forehead against the pillow more firmly.

“She wants to talk to your father,” Felix said after a moment. He hadn’t actually agreed to help, or to take her wager, and at any rate the match had ended before they could declare a winner. But it seemed like something he should tell Annette, regardless.

Annette rolled onto her back, looking up at the ceiling, which was good because Felix wasn’t sure a pillow was conducive for conversation. “Well, she’s probably right about that,” she said glumly. “I don’t think he’s agreed to come to the wedding yet; Uncle Gérald says we need to go talk to him about it.”

“No, I mentioned that,” Felix said. “I don’t think it’s that. She wants me to help her get past the guards. She said she doesn’t want your uncle to know.”

There was a long pause, and when Felix finally looked over at Annette, she was staring up at the ceiling, one hand over her head, grasping at the pillow.

“Does she want me to know?” she asked finally.

Felix shrugged, although Annette wasn’t looking at him to see it. “If she didn’t want you to know, I don’t see why she’d tell  _ me _ ,” he pointed out.

“Mother isn’t particularly used to husbands who practice good communication with their wives,” Annette explained, her voice flat and jaded. She grabbed the pillow from underneath her head and pressed it against her face, and Felix was pretty sure he could hear muffled screaming, this time.

“Does that actually help?” Felix asked after a moment.

“It doesn’t hurt,” came Annette’s muffled reply.

She fell silent, the pillow still pressed against her face, and Felix reached out momentarily, to provide some comfort or reassurance, but he pulled his hand back before it could land, still somewhat uncertain on where he stood with Annette. Certainly, no one had ever accused him of practicing good communication before.

“I’m sorry,” he said softly instead, not entirely sure what the apology was for. For her parents, maybe. For the situation. For him.

Annette peeked out at him from behind the pillow, her eyes wide and mournful where they had been glinting and angry. “Felix . . .” she started, trailing off after saying his name, pulling herself until she was sitting up, looking at him.

Felix held out his arm again, an invitation, and she closed the gap, readjusting so she slumped against him at the foot of the bed. Felix slung his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer, and Annette sighed, closing her eyes again. It reminded Felix of how they’d watched the sunrise together, the day before, huddled next to each other on a log next to the makeshift camp’s makeshift fire, both of them just a little shocked to still be alive. But even if he had been so tired he could barely think then, they had had the sunrise, and the outdoors, and the wild intoxication of a narrow escape, and the promised future that they were returning somewhere they wanted to go later that day. And now they were just back in Dominic, and it was hard to remember why they had been so desperate to be there yesterday morning. The walls of the castle seemed more like a prison than ever, even as their one chance of escape closed in on them.

“Are you done with screaming, then?” Felix finally asked, and Annette gave a snort of laughter, which was nice to hear, even if it was more bitter than he remembered her laughter being.

“I just – I’m sorry you had to see all that,” Annette mumbled against him, shuffling to get comfortable the same way she’d shuffled against the pillow. “My mother and I don’t usually shout at each other in semi-public arenas, I promise.”

“You guys seem pretty close, I don’t know,” Felix said, uncomfortable in giving both advice and assessment. His relationship with his father had been so disastrous that he didn’t feel in much of a place to discuss Anentte’s familial relationships, but he didn’t think she had much to apologize for.

“We are – we were,” Annette said, uncertainly. “It’s just, I don’t know. She still treats me like a child, but I guess mothers do that sometimes. But I feel like she closes herself off, like there’s an entire world that she lives in sometimes and I can’t get to it. And it . . . it kind of set me off to see it happening again. I don’t want any secrets, not now.”

Something clicked for Felix. “It’s happened before,” he said, and it wasn’t a question, and he pulled his arm tighter around her, feeling her nod against him.

“When my father left,” she mumbled, staring at a spot on the floor with such intensity that she might have been trying to burn a hole in the carpet. “She never stops moving, my mother, sometimes I’m out of breath just watching her. And when he left, it was like – it was like the entire world stopped. Like she wasn’t even breathing anymore. And she wouldn’t  _ talk _ to me about it. All she would do is assure me he was coming back, and I didn’t know where he’d gone, or why, or  _ anything _ .” 

“Hey, don’t – don’t cry,” Felix said, feeling distinctly unhelpful. He felt more unhelpful when he looked down at her, pulling back just enough to see her face. “You’re not crying,” he added, stating the obvious.

Annette shook her head, her mouth set in an unreadable line. “I don't so much, not anymore. I cried enough after he – when he first was gone. When she first disappeared like that.” She gave an angry, frustrated sigh. “It just makes me so – I just get upset to know she’s still hiding stuff from me, like that. Big stuff. Mother always said dark magic was for desperate people; I’ve grown up quite afraid of it.”

She was staring at the backs of her hands now, which Felix guessed had something to do with dark magic, the way the two had argued back on the training grounds. He wondered if Cornelia had done something to Annette, while he wasn’t there, and he could feel his stomach tie itself into knots at the thought. He reached out and took one of her hands, running his index finger over the tiny, painful map across the back. Unlike welts he got through training or battle, the purple-red marks on the backs of her hand were strangely cold to the touch, and Felix suppressed a shudder even as Annette remained unflinching.

“Maybe . . . maybe something changed her mind, or she thinks differently about it, now,” Felix suggested. “She might still have been telling you the truth.”

“It’s not that I think she’s lying, it’s that she doesn’t tell me anything at all,” Annette explained. “And I don't have any way to get at what she’s thinking, and that’s really – oh!”

Annette sat up suddenly, knocking her elbows into Felix’s side as she pushed away from him. Felix winced – two decades of training had not prepared him to defend against Annette’s sheer clumsiness – but Annette didn’t notice, or at least didn’t apologize. She was already on her feet and pacing the perimeter of his room.

“The letters!” she said eagerly, as if she’d landed on something that would solve everything. “You still have them, right?”

“Um,” Felix said. “Probably?” He could vaguely remember the letters she was talking about, taken from her uncle’s office in the dead of night shortly before  _ she _ was taken from her uncle’s office in the dead of night. Felix had stumbled back to his room, his feet bloodied and his arms covered with thorny scratches and his leg barely functional, and he must have done  _ something _ with the letters, but it hadn’t been his top priority, then.

It was certainly Annette’s top priority now. She completed her lap of the perimeter of the room, staring suspiciously at the tops of all available flat spaces, and whirled on Felix when she got to his desk, which was more or less completely empty. “So, where are they?” she prompted.

“Somewhere. . . safe,” Felix said after a pause. “Definitely somewhere safe.”

Annette gave him a pitying look, which was somehow worse than an annoyed one, but her eyes lit up with realization and she dashed to the center of the room, where Felix left his trunk, still meaning to unpack it at some point. Annette threw the trunk open and, kneeling next to it, began rummaging through it.

“Hey – hey!” Felix said, sitting up straighter on the bed as Annette threw his clothes over her shoulder, a pair of socks landing on the bed next to him. At least his swords were safely tucked away on top of the wardrobe. “I’m sitting right here, you know.”

“I know; help me look for them,” Annette said, scooping several of his shirts out of the trunk and throwing them on the floor.

“Why do you – I didn’t say they were in my trunk, Annette,” Felix said, dodging another flying pair of socks.

“No, but you probably got back to your room that night and threw them to the bottom of your trunk for ‘safe keeping’,” Annette said. She was now halfway buried in the trunk herself, her voice muffled as she shuffled around the bottom of it. “Like you do with that one junk drawer in your room at Garreg Mach.”

Felix rolled his eyes. Annette had been on the constant warpath with his room at Garreg Mach, particularly after Grondor. It was like if she could put physical space into order, she could put the rest of their lives into order. That one desk drawer had particularly made her fingers twitch. “It isn’t a junk drawer; those are all extremely important docum –”

“Aha!” Annette cried, emerging from his trunk holding the bundle of letters aloft. “I knew it! It wouldn’t kill you to organize things, Felix.”

“You found it, didn’t you?” Felix argued, but Annette had already moved on from this conversation. She closed the lid of the trunk shut and leaned up against a corner, tucking her knees under her and she began to untie the ribbon holding the letters together.

“That can’t be comfortable,” Felix said, raising his eyebrow skeptically as Annette balanced against the sharp corners and metal edges of his traveling trunk.

Annette waved her hand at him, motioning him towards her without looking up from the letters. “Come be my pillow, then, you were good at that,” she said. Felix felt a blush tinting his cheeks, but Annette was too preoccupied with sorting out letters to notice what she said or its effect. Felix lowered himself onto the carpet, awkwardly inching towards Annette as he took a seat, cross-legged, next to her. Annette looked up from her letters and smiled at him, seeming to suddenly remember he was there, and Felix looked away, feeling the blush spread to his ears, now, as well. He snapped his focus back to her when he felt Annette settle against him, her shoulder blades momentarily prodding against him as she flailed to find a comfortable resting place, which ended up being more in his lap than he expected. Annette unfolded the top letter and squinted at it. Felix could read, over her shoulder, neat and precise handwriting addressed to Gérald, dated a mere two weeks after the tragedy of Duscur.

“There are some earlier than this,” Annette said softly. “But she must have written this so soon after we received the news. I wonder if she knew then that Father wasn’t coming – he wasn’t going to be –” she broke off, drawing in breath with a loud sigh.

“I don’t have to stay,” Felix assured her, even as his hands contradicted his words, sliding around her waist to support her against him.

She looked back to him, surprised. “Well, you’re more comfortable than the floor,” she offered with a shaky smile.

“I just mean,” Felix said, taking the letter from her. She let go of it easily, already flipping through the stack to organize them more chronologically. “These might not be pleasant to read. For you. If you want to be alone when you read them.”

“I can handle a few letters from the past, I think,” Annette said, finding the earliest date and sliding it to the top of the stack. "I don’t cry anymore, remember?”

Felix notched his chin over Annette’s shoulder, looking down at the letter with her. Her hair brushed against his cheek as she tilted her head slightly, a sure sign that she was already disappearing into a deep concentration towards the text in front of her.

“I’m here if you do cry,” Felix said softly, but Annette was so far gone into the past that he wasn’t sure she heard him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I read _Regarding the Fountain_ too much in elementary school and Jane Austen’s catalogue too much in high school and now I don’t think a story is good if it doesn’t contain multiple plot-significant letters. So look for that next chapter; I’m sorry but it’s who I am. (I have no excuse for why I keep writing wizard duels.)
> 
> Early chapter update because it’s my birthday today! Is this a weird birthday gift? I don’t know. I also had cake. We’re back to Tuesdays after this, probably, but what can I say, I’m a woman of mystery. I’ll keep you on your toes.
> 
> Stay safe out there, everyone. Drink water, wear masks, watch out for each other, etc etc. <3 you all.


	17. Annette Tells the Truth

_ Dearest Gérald, _ __

_ Just writing a quick note to send my warmest thanks for hosting Annette over the summer. She came back quite freckled, the little dear, and I swear, were those the same two braids I sent her to you in? She won’t stop talking about the wind spell you taught her, or the hedge maze, or how we need to get a cat. I don’t think a child could ask for a better summer! Next time, though, dear, let’s consult on appropriate level offensive spells for an eleven-year-old. If you teach her, she will learn it. I’d like her to be at least fifteen before she tries Excalibur. _

__ _ I’m so sorry we could not join you ourselves for any of the summer. I’ve been saying to Gustave we need to get away to the country soon; Fhirdiad can grow so stuffy in Verdant Moon. What’s the purpose of a family estate if you cannot spend time there? (Although we are so grateful to you for your work – we could never find a steward or a groundskeeper or a diplomat half as efficient as you, even if we had a person for each position.) Gustave is so busy at his post right now. I think that little prince keeps him just as busy as our little princess keeps me, but perhaps I can steal us all away over the holidays. Annette might be able to convince him, herself – she talks to him of Dominic nonstop, and has even named his most recent animal carving after you. “Uncle,” oddly, not Gérald. I’ll get Gustave to carve you something before we visit; you can name it “Niece” and they can be a matched set. _

_ May the goddess smile down on you and our territory, and may we meet again when she wills it. Love from me, and Annette, and Gustave, and Uncle the Cat. _

_ Fondly Yours, _

_ Fantine _

__

Annette looked at her reflection, and a different Annette looked back. An Annette who stood taller and straighter when she walked through the world and expected the world to look at her in admiration. An Annette who could afford to wear all white, because she never spilled ink or soup or dishwater on herself, and because she never worried about money at all. An Annette who stole dukes from their princes and threw kingdoms into chaos and barely blinked at the glittering gemstone sparkling on her left hand, because it was merely blended into the everyday elegance she surrounded herself with as nations crumbled around her.

Hanna had only had two weeks, but she was a very talented seamstress.

“Are we thinking hair up or hair down, dear?” Fantine asked Annette’s reflection, standing behind her. Annette was taller than her mother while standing on the low step stool, and it was strange to see their eyes meet at level. Fantine had gathered most of Annette’s hair in her hands and was holding it back against her head, an approximation of a chignon that Annette knew from experience would require at least an hour to coax into place. With her hair gathered at her neck and the plunging backline of the dress, Annette felt strangely exposed, although she was wearing more fabric, foot for foot, than she had ever managed before in her life.

“Maybe down?” Annette suggested uncertainly, and her mother dropped her hair, watching it cascade down across her shoulders. It had gotten longer than she usually kept it in the past few months; it looked rather wild now. “Maybe up,” she said with a frown, reaching herself to try to twist it into submission.

“Arms down,” snapped Hanna, tugging on Annette’s elbow before she could even gather half her hair. Her undeniable success in tailoring Annette’s wedding dress had not improved her mood in the slightest, and she frantically poked more pins around Annette’s shoulders to give the short bell sleeves what she called a “better shape,” a half-hour of painstaking work already for absolutely no difference, as far as Annette could tell.

“We could try something with braids,” her mother said, looping a few strands back experimentally. “Keep it simple. You’re stunning enough without needing to go all out on hair. But we  _ can _ go all out with hair, if you want.” She frowned at herself in the mirror, missing Annette’s small smile in her direction. The tension from yesterday still hung between them, around the edges of their conversations, painful to look at if you turned too quickly. But Annette’s mother had never been one to let a grudge get in the way of a project, and if they had to set aside an argument to get through the wedding, Fantine Dominic would fling it aside with reckless abandon.

“Can’t we just decide the morning of?” Annette suggested, trying to keep very still as Hanna’s pins traveled up her sleeves and towards her neckline. “See how we feel then? A braid will take like ten minutes, tops.”

Fantine frowned. “If you want curls, though, we should do them the night before,” she said, winding strands of Annette’s hair around her fingers. “I can pin them up for you, if you want. It’s always so hard to get the back pieces on your own.”

“I’ll have enough trouble sleeping without pins poking me in the back of the head, Mother,” Annette said, more sharply than she meant to. She wasn’t even sure why she  _ was _ so on edge – it wasn’t about pinning curls; she rather liked it when her mother curled her hair.

“Better to pin them the night before the wedding than the night after!” Isabella sang from where sat fiddling with Annette’s hem. She looked up at Annette and grinned. “Although I supposed by then you can look as frightful as you want – he can’t change his mind anymore!”

“Isabella!” Hanna scolded, but Fantine was an inconvenient barricade between them, so she settled for a glare over her usual foot nudge.

“I’m not saying he’ll want to!” Isabella defended herself, unapologetic as ever. “Not after he sees this dress – mother, you’ve outdone yourself this time, you really have.”

“I work myself to the bone to finish a dress in under a month and you work yourself to the bone to ensure we’ll never have customers again regardless,” Hanna huffed, completely oblivious to the furtive glances Annette and Fantine were exchanging as they tried not to laugh. “That’s  _ no way _ to talk to a Duchess, young lady.”

“She’s not a Duchess yet,” Isabella muttered to herself. “Who knows what could happen between now and the wedding.” She looked up hopefully at Annette. “Unless you two have secretly eloped. That would be ever so exciting.”

Annette smiled down at her, a balance to Hanna’s furious death stare. “If I had,” she said with a quick wink. “I wouldn’t tell you, now would I?”

Isabella giggled and covered her face with her hands, somehow managing to avoid stabbing herself with the dozens of pins she balanced in each hand. She was evidently, for all her gossip, a very talented seamstress, as well.

Annette opened her mouth to tell her mother that a chignon would be perfectly fine, she was sure, but she cut off as she heard voices trailing down the hall towards them.

“It just makes more sense to break them into two groups,” Felix was saying, his words becoming clearer as the footsteps grew louder. “It’s all a show of power with bandits, anyway; you don’t actually need superior manpower if they  _ think _ you have it.”

“Abel just seems too young for a command post,” Gérald rumbled. “A few more years, and then maybe.”

“You don’t have a few more years; you need mobility now,” Felix objected. “I was fifteen when I got my first command; I turned out fine.”

“I won’t risk diplomatic ruin or my niece’s happiness by contradicting you,” Gérald said, his voice fading now, as they passed by the sitting room that they had converted into a makeshift studio for the seamstresses.

Fantine brightened visibly at the conversation. “That’s Felix right now, isn’t it, Annette dear?” she said, looking towards the door. “Do you think he’ll want to see your dress? I’ll go and fetch him, shall I?”

“No!” Annette, Hanna, and Isabella shouted in unison, and Annette was rewarded with multiple pin jabs for their joint passion.

Fantine looked as if she was the one who had just been jabbed in the arm with pins. “No? You don’t think – don’t you think he’d want to?” she asked, confused.

“Terrible boy, no manners,” Hanna mumbled.

“Absolutely no sense of fashion,” Isabella said at the same time.

“Mother! I’m practically  _ naked _ ,” Annette argued, clutching at the neckline of her dress even as Hannah batted her arms down.

Fantine stared at the three of them in bewilderment, but she knew when to pick her battles. “Well, I’ll just pop over and say hello, then,” she said brightly. “Hanna, love, don’t worry to much about the sleeves. They’re already miles more in fashion than whatever monstrosity I wore on my wedding day.”

Hanna muttered something about how newer didn’t mean better, not that brides today realized that, but she was smiling to herself as Fantine left the room. Isabella perhaps noticed this, too, and seized upon her mother’s good humor as a chance to once again forget that Annette was ostensibly a duchess.

“So where is Duke Handsome taking you after the wedding?” she asked, carelessly jabbing Annette in the ankle as she adjusted the hem on the second lining of the skirt. “I hope it’s somewhere nice. Somewhere sunny, you know?”

“I think we’re just going to go back to Fraldarius for a while,” Annette said hesitantly, hoping she hid the slight frown. Ideally, Felix would be taking her to Garreg Mach, where she could blow a few holes in Cornelia’s army and then rain wind spells down on the Empire capital, but that wasn’t really an answer she could give. “He’s got a lot to manage,” she added, which sounded reasonable. “He just took over his family’s territory.”

She would have to come up with a better lie for her relatives at the wedding.

Isabella may have found the answer boring, but she didn’t let it dampen her spirits too much. “I’d want to go to Enbarr, if it were me,” she said cheerfully. “The City of Song, they call it. Perhaps you could go to the opera.” She looked up at Annette curiously. “Is your fiancé friends with the Emperor?” she asked, slightly awestruck at the thought. “Maybe you could meet her.”

Annette wasn’t even sure where to start answering that question, and maybe it was because she was gaping down at Isabella instead of giggling about Felix’s alleged handsomeness that she heard the voices trickling back towards the doorway.

“No, it’s just a quick glance, and then you can go back to Gérald and talk about bandit hideouts or whatever it is you two get up to,” her mother was saying as they approached the door. Annette froze, and then began nervously tugging at her dress in every possible direction, suddenly wishing she looked completely different, or could disappear entirely.

Felix’s voice, to his credit, sounded just as unsure about Fantine’s idea. “I think – you know, Fantine, she told me it was bad luck, last time,” he said, his voice coming up to the door. “Is it the same seamstresses? I don’t want to interfere with their . . . artistic process?”

Hanna gave a snort and Annette legitimately could not tell if it was in approval or disapproval. She braced herself to meet Felix, nervous for no reason. She cast a frantic glance in the mirror to get advice from alternate Annette, but it was just her again, panicky and flustered and desperately wanting him to think she was pretty – no, beautiful.

If the last week and a half was any indication, there was a very good chance that Felix  _ did _ think she was beautiful, and the thought of that made Annette’s stomach flip in a way that she liked quite a lot. Still, a girl liked to be sure, and Felix could be obnoxiously taciturn, even if he smiled when she looked at him and pulled her close whenever she wandered too far away and acted so much like a proper fiancé that Annette dared to think he might not want the ring back when they got out of Dominic.

The footsteps continued on past the door, and Annette nearly fell off her stool.

“They won’t mind at all, I’m sure,” her mother was saying, her voice growing fainter in the opposite direction. “They’d love for you to see it.”

“If you say so,” Felix said. “Tell me, Fantine – how would you describe the dress? Like, what words would you use, specifically? Just wondering.”

The tail end of his words faded out of reach, and Annette never did hear how Fantine described her dress. She didn’t hear much of anything, at the moment, as she flung herself off the stool and darted towards the door, ignoring the still-too-long hem and pins pricking at her ankles.

“What has he done to – that dress is not for running in, you silly girl!” Hanna called after her, all decorum towards the upper nobility forgotten.

Annette turned, for a moment feeling genuine regret at being scolded so. But she took a deep breath and replied, “Your work is lovely, Hanna, it always is. But I’m really going to need this dress to be for running in, I’m sorry, if you can make those changes by the wedding.”

She was out the door before Hannah could begin her list of grievances.

It wasn’t hard to follow after them – Fantine hadn’t led Felix very far before he figured out they weren’t actually going to find Annette, and although their voices were indistinct from three corridors over, Annette was able to find them. She slowed to a tiptoe as she heard them around the final corner.

“I’ve got to see him, Felix, it’s got to be tonight,” Fantine was saying, her voice low and desperate. It sent knives to Annette’s chest to hear her speak like that; a memory of adolescence she never quite tucked away.

“You’ve explained that to me.” Felix’s voice was also low and tense, and Annette crept forward to listen more closely. “You haven’t explained  _ why _ , though – Fantine, give me anything, here.”

“Do you really need a reason to let me talk to my husband?” Fantine snapped. “He’s going to die, you realize that, right? Cornelia is going to kill him. Political prisoners don’t come back from Fhirdiad.”

“No one realizes that more than me,” Felix replied, an anger at the edge of his voice that he reserved only for conversations about Dimitri, not that Fantine knew that. “Do  _ you _ realize what you’re asking me to do? What would it look like if we got caught? I’m marrying your daughter in two days, Fantine. Can you not see how easily this could all fall apart?”

“I’m not a fool. It’s worth the risk.”

There was a pause. Then Felix asked, “Have you told Annette about this?”

A longer pause. “This doesn’t concern her,” Fantine said, her voice dropping even softer, her own anger at the periphery. 

“Then it doesn’t concern me.” There was no pause this time; Felix had never sounded more certain. “If you want to talk to your family, start with your daughter. I’ve had enough of watching everyone in this damn castle pushing her around like – hey, where are you going?”

Annette pressed her hands against the lower half of her face as if that would help her hide, but she was unsurprised to see her mother poke her head around the corner and stare at her disapprovingly. She’d always been able to suss out when Annette was eavesdropping.

“It’s bad luck for him to see you in the dress, didn’t you say, dear?” Fantine asked, sadly. “We don’t need any more of that, here.”

“Mother, I –” Annette was surprised to find she didn’t feel chided, or scolded, despite the familiar scenario of being caught snooping by someone who had taught her not to. It was strange to be the one doing the lecturing. “What are you  _ doing _ ?” she asked instead, which wasn’t an outright lecture, but felt like one.

Her mother stepped around the corner, her arms folded against herself, and Annette realized for the first time that she looked older than she remembered from childhood, that she didn’t loom so large beside her. She looked down at Annette, running her fingers across a flowing, decorative sleeve.

“I felt so beautiful the day I wore this dress,” she said softly. “You’re going to be – so beautiful.”

Annette wasn’t sure if she stepped into the hug or if her mother pulled her forward, but it felt strangely safe and strangely fragile, and she buried her face against her mother’s shoulder and tried to think of a way to tell her things would be okay, which might have been a lie.

“You’ll be beautiful,” her mother whispered into her hair. “And then you’ll be out of here. And you’ll be safe.” She pulled back, looking down at Annette, and Annette was devastated to see tears in her eyes. “That’ll be enough,” she added. She looked over her shoulder towards Felix, who was doing his best to blend in with the opposite wall. She turned back to Annette. “I’ll go do damage control with Hanna – it looks like you pulled half her temporary stitches out. Don’t be long, okay?”

She’d resumed dignity and poise as she walked away from Annette, and Annette felt like she was watching the wrong reflection of herself.

“I think your mother hates me,” Felix said, directly behind her, and Annette jumped and turned. He was now leaning on the same wall as herl, as if he’d been standing there the entire time.

“She’ll come around,” Annette assured him. “She just might think you’re a bit, um.”

“Evil?” Felix suggested.

“Useless,” Annette landed on. “Which is worse.”

Felix closed his eyes and sighed. “She and your father can agree on that, I guess.” He looked back at her. “I don’t know, Annette, I just – we’re putting enough on the line without compromising the plan for someone who won’t even –”

“Shhhh,” Annette shushed, placing a finger against his lips. “Not a great time to talk, Felix. You’re getting careless. And you don’t have to explain, I get it.”

Felix looked down at her, reaching to grab her elbows lightly, in something like a loose embrace. “She wasn’t lying about the wedding dress, I take it,” he said, sweeping his eyes over Annette.

Annette dropped her hand and stepped back, as if that would hide her blush. “Yes, do you like it?” she asked, her voice squeaking a bit too much on the question as she twirled around to let him see it.

Felix nodded. “It’s very – um – I like how the aspects of northwestern Fódlan tradition are modified by the modern sensibilities of Adestrian fashion.”

“Is that how my mother described it?” Annette asked him.

His ears turned pink. “Maybe,” he muttered.

Annette put her hands on her hips, taking a step forward, backing Felix up against the wall behind them. “And what do you  _ actually _ think?” she prompted, glaring up at him even if she was trying not to smile.

She heard his breath catch, but he looked away and rolled his eyes. “You’re perfect, Annie,” he mumbled. “I think you know that.”

Annette beamed at him, gently pushing his cheek back so he was looking at her again. “Maybe I do,” she said. “But it’s nice to hear it, all the same.”

She liked to be sure.

Annette could tell Isabella felt a bit bad when she showed up and pulled her back into the sitting room, but she could also tell that the girl was delighted to be the one to do it.

_ Dear Gérald, _

_ No doubt by now the news has spread from Fhirdiad to Dominic and you know of the unspeakable tragedy that has befallen our kingdom. I have been informed that Gustave was not slain in the assassination. This news was brought to me by a squire serving as a messenger; I have not seen my husband in four weeks now. _

_ Please, have you heard from him? Has he travelled to Dominic? I am beside myself with worry. If he is in Dominic, please let me know, and I will travel there immediately. Or tell him to come back to Fhirdiad immediately. I need to speak with him. I need him. Please, Gérald; I cannot bear the silence. _

_ Despondently yours, _ __

_ Fantine _

“This seems like something someone else could be doing,” Felix groused, flipping over a napkin and creasing an edge the way Annette had carefully showed him.

“It probably is,” Annette said, not looking up from her own folded design, her tongue sticking out slightly when she wasn’t talking. “But this was the only thing I could think of that would get you out of meeting all my relatives.” They were camped out in the ballroom, which would become a reception hall the next day, folding stacks of decorative napkins to place on the long table runners that had meant so much to Fantine days before.

“They still find us,” Felix grumbled, and if he was grumpy, he also wasn’t wrong. Extended Dominic family members had been streaming in all that morning and afternoon, many of whom Annette hadn’t seen since she was a little girl – even with the wartime restrictions, this was the largest wedding the Dominic clan had seen in a while. Gérald’s collection of diplomatic allies and necessary political invitees wouldn’t show up until tomorrow, but the castle was still inundated with more people than Annette could remember ever being there, even when she visited as a little girl. Annette, of course, had no strategic allies to suggest. Neither, for that matter, did Felix – there had been some suggestion of sending an invitation to his uncle, but given the man’s strong Kingdom sympathies, it was decided to keep things purely in Western Fódlan.

“Just don’t mix up Aunt Alda and Aunt Alice and you’ll be fine,” Annette said cheerfully.

“I thought it was Aunt Alma,” Felix asked tentatively.

“No, she’s been dead for over a hundred years,” Annette said. “I guess if anyone would come back as a ghost to object to my matrimonial decisions, I  _ would _ be her, though. She was evidently pretty scary.”

Their conversation was interrupted by a flood of arrivals of relatives that, fortunately for Felix’s sake, had no A’s in their names: two cousins named Linus and Lloyd and their wives and children, whom even Annette lost track of five minutes after she said hello. Linus gave Felix several hearty pats on the back and Lloyd took Annette’s face in his hands and kissed her on both cheeks and they all said several pleasant things for ten minutes or so before Lissa and Fantine appeared to whisk them away to various guest bedrooms throughout the castle. Annette felt her head spin, and snuck a glance over at Felix, who returned to refolding another decorative napkin.

“It’s supposed to stand up,” she said. “You need to crease the edges more.”

“I’m literally doing exactly what you told me,” he said, sullen. “If we just prop them up with forks I don’t think anyone would notice that they . . . lean like that.”

“No, you just have to be more – here, like this.” Annette took his admittedly lopsided napkin art and unfolded it, grabbing his hands and moving him through the steps, their fingers awkwardly tangling against fabric and one another. “Like that, did you get it?” she asked, balancing the napkin tower next to the rest of the stack.

“Think I missed it,” Felix muttered. “You could show me again. Or if you had a napkin folding song, maybe that would help me remember –”

“Villain,” Annette said, throwing her own half-finished napkin tower at him, which set her back about five minutes but was worth the effort.

They folded in silence for a while, and Annette wondered if maybe she should write a napkin folding song, just to speed things along, but the rare moment they were together without someone else breathing down their necks seemed too valuable to spoil with a silly tune.

“Hey Felix, can I ask you something?” she ventured instead. She had a host of things she wanted to ask him, and some she couldn’t ask in Dominic ask no matter how empty the ballroom was, but they had an sightline on the door and there was very little chance of them being overheard unless someone came in – the ballroom was far too large for eavesdropping to be effective, and they were tucked away in a corner.

“Mm,” he replied, pressing his fingers into the fold of the napkin with comical strength. It was still going to tilt.

“Why’d they choose you, to come to Dominic? To, you know –” Annette waved her hands around in a way she hoped communicated their larger plan, emphasizing the ring on her finger and the general reception table settings surrounding them. She figured Felix got it when his eyes widened slightly, then narrowed, casting a suspicious glance towards the door. “They could’ve sent someone else. Why’d you volunteer? Folding napkins and impressing mother-in-laws doesn’t really seem to be your whole deal.”

“As evidenced by my track record, you can say it,” Felix muttered, and Annette giggled, but didn’t reply, staring at him expectantly. His eyes darted over at her, and while Annette had put her work down to listen to his answer, he seemed to redouble his efforts to crease the edges of the folds.

“Well?” Annette prompted.

Felix glanced towards the door and back at her, then down at the fan shape he was folding into the fabric. “I mean, it had to be me, right?” he asked, Annette felt her heart skip.

‘What do you mean?” she asked hesitantly.

He gave her a quick look, then frowned, turning back to his work. “I was in the right place at the right time. Your uncle wouldn’t consider an offer from someone like, I don’t know, Ashe. Mercedes. Sylvain’s father still runs Gautier, and can you imagine the nightmare of wrangling an offer with him. I don’t know, I did what I had to,” he propped the napkin up to stand, and it lurched towards Annette, lopsided as ever. He scowled at it, and the scowl faded as he looked at Annette. “I didn’t mind,” he added quietly.

Annette gave him a smile, not sure if that was the answer she wanted but not wanting him to know if it wasn't. “Well,” she said, “I’d rather marry you than Sylvain, so it worked out in my favor, I guess.”

“A low bar to clear, but I’ll take it,” Felix said. He nudged his lackadaisical cloth sculpture towards the rest and reached for Annette’s hand. “Listen, Annette, I’ve been wanting to say –”

The noise of the door creaking open startled them both, and they jumped apart. It was useful for subterfuge but wildly frustrating for every other aspect of the situation, and Annette cast a glare at the door so ferocious that she actually felt guilty when her great-aunt Mildred toddled in, scanning the room for her. Great-Aunt Mildred had always been overly generous with sweets, when Annette was a child, and she didn’t deserve glares, no matter how much Annette had wanted Felix to finish the sentence.

Felix never did finish the sentence, even after Mildred had pronounced him “very striking” and slipped Annette a peppermint stick and promised to beat them all at dice that evening and toddled back out of the ballroom, content to go find other members of the family. Annette thought about asking him what he had planned to say, but he folded napkins with a studied intensity that bordered on avoidance, and she found she lost her nerve. Annette tossed another napkin to the pile of table settings and another unfinished conversation to the pile of questions she’d ask when they escaped Dominic. Instead, she repurposed a song about morning walks to sing as they worked, and although it was afternoon and they were going nowhere fast, it did the trick.

_ Dear Gérald, _

_ I have read over the documents and contracts you were so kind to send me. I have also read over the letter you provided from Gustave. You need not send further assurances of its legitimacy; I believe you. Gustave always was a concise writer.  _

_ Gustave of course will no longer have rooms available in the palace for him, but we have retained ownership of our home in Fhirdiad for the time being. Even a tenuous connection to a noble title can get you far. I thank you for asking. Annette is still too young to begin formal schooling, but I have great hopes for her future at the School of Sorcery, should she pass the entrance exams, so it’s in our best interest to stay close by. _

_ Allow me to extend my congratulations on your new title. May you be a rock for the Kingdom in a sea of uncertainty, Baron Dominic. _

_ Respectfully yours, _

_ Fantine _

Annette would have liked nothing more after dinner than to sneak away to her room, bury herself under two to three extra blankets, and sleep for twelve hours. She could bring Felix along, as long as he promised to not talk; he had been something of an expert in not talking during the large, chaotic family dinner. Annette had fielded more questions about mundane details from more extended relatives than she thought was actually possible, and Felix had somehow managed to retreat even further into himself, which actually seemed to have a positive effect on many of her aunts, who found this mysterious. Annette supposed high status excused bad manners, but she was all talked out, even as her family drifted through the castle, making their way to various common areas and parlors to continue games and drinks and conversations. Annette was already calculating at what time she could reasonably claim she was heading to bed when her uncle lightly grabbed her elbow, shepherding her and her mother down an abandoned corridor. Felix was fast on her heels; he had stuck close to her to avoid being cornered by well-intentioned strangers, and he seemed uninterested in being separated now.

“Now’s our best shot,” her uncle said to them in a low voice, and Annette knew without him explaining that he was taking them to see her father. “It would look stranger for the three of us to be roaming the halls after everyone goes to bed, should we get caught. It will be easy to slip back into the festivities in a half-hour or so.”

Annette’s mother took an unsteady breath, and Annette could feel her trembling slightly, although this was what she wanted. “Have you thought about what we’re going to say to him?” she asked.

Her uncle looked surprised at this. “I was . . . I was rather hoping you could take the lead on that, Fantine,” he confessed. “Surely the combination of his wife and daughter – how many times have you seen him in the last eight years?”

Fantine opened her mouth but her reply was too strangled to be an answer. She brought her hands to her face to muffle the sob, and Annette wrapped her arms around her, resting her head against her shoulder like she was a child again.

“Would it help if I brought an extra sword?” Felix offered. “I could go get one.”

“Well . . . no, son, I don’t think it would,” her uncle said, and Annette was glad when he turned away from her and her mother to look at Felix. “Actually, I don’t think you should come with us at all. This seems like . . . a family matter.”

Annette would have made the point that Felix was family, or would be in a matter of hours, but her mother was drawing unsteady breaths and stroking her hair in a way that ostensibly was supposed to provide Annette comfort, and Annette didn’t feel much like an argument at the moment. She looked over at Felix, and shook her head slightly, and he frowned as he took a step back from her uncle and towards her, resting a hand on her back.

“Come find me when this is done,” he said softly, to her, and no one else. “I’ll find a balcony to wait on or something; I don’t think your family needs to see much more of me tonight.”

Annette was so tangled up in her mother’s anxious embrace that Felix’s eyes lingered longer than his hands, and neither lasted long enough before he disappeared down the corridor. With a wave of his hand, her uncle led them in the opposite direction, towards the back corner of the castle where the stairs led down to the prison cells.

The castle dungeons seemed darker than Annette remembered, which couldn’t possibly be true, as it was lit by the same amount of dim torches on the walls, as well as the one her uncle carried. The dungeon also seemed damper, which might have been the case, as the spring air was settling deep within the castle as the season progressed, not yet shifting into summer, though summer never reached cells this deep underground.

Gérald marched ahead, the circle of light from his torch leaving Annette and her mother behind him in shadows. They hung back, out of instinct rather than planning, as he approached the far cell.

“Gustave, we need to talk,” he said, and Annette could hear her father’s voice, low and rumbling, as she inched closer. “I’ve brought visitors,” he added, gesturing the two closer.

“If it’s that turncoat brat here to lecture me about fatherhood again, then you can both leave.” Annette could hear her father’s voice more clearly as he stepped toward the door of his cell. It was possible he wanted his insults to be more clearly articulated as he peered through the bars. “Perhaps if he’d listened even once to  _ his _ father, we wouldn’t be in this – oh. Oh, I see.”

Gustave’s oaths were swallowed under his breath, and probably too sincere to be blasphemy, as he stared at Fantine, cast half in shadow at the edge of the flickering pool of light emanating from Gérald’s torch. Fantine gave Annette’s hand a final squeeze and let go, stepping forward towards the door.

“Hello, Gustave,” she said, her voice stronger and more steady than Annette had anticipated. “You’re. . . well, you’re not looking well, I guess I can’t say that.”

“Fantine, I –” Gustave said, his voice creaking and uncertain. He looked away, a move of evasion that Annette recognized well from her time at the monastery. “Of course you’d be here for the wedding,” he muttered, more to himself than to anyone else. “I hope your journey here was safe; the roads have been dangerous these past few months.”

“Yes, darling, the roads were fine. And the weather has been unseasonably cold. And I hear the harvest will be good this year,” Fantine said, stepping closer to the cell. She reached her hand out (not up, Annette realized, out – her mother was only a few inches shorter than her father) and grazed his fingers, which had been clutching the bars of the window in the cell door. Gustave flinched as if a thunder spell had coursed through his entire body, and he looked up at his wife, not pulling his hand away. Fantine tilted her head to the side, looking almost bemused in the moment. “I think that takes care of all the small talk, doesn’t it?” she asked. “I’ve compressed it for time.”

“You can’t want to see me,” Gustave said. “After all these years, you can’t want to talk to me.

Fantine shook her head, slowly, sadly. “You don’t get to tell me what I want,” she replied, her voice as soft as the light was low. “You don’t get to tell me anything.”

“I don’t deserve to see you,” Gustave said, not looking away. “I don’t deserve to talk to you.”

“I’m not here to talk about you, darling,” Fantine said. Her hand barely covered half his fingers, but she rested against him more firmly. “I'm here to talk about our daughter. Remember her? I think you’ve seen her more recently.” She gestured her other hand behind her expectantly and Annette walked closer to the cell door. Her father’s eyes barely flickered towards her before looking back at Fantine. Annette was used to it.

“Hello, Father,” she said glumly.

“Annette and I wanted to make sure you’ll be at the wedding tomorrow, Gustave,” Fantine said briskly. “Someone’s got to see her off to Fraldarius; I’d be so embarrassed to have to do it on my own.”

Gustave’s eyes finally slid over to Annette, and he looked down at her, dejection and disappointment fighting against each other. “You’re going through with it, then?” he asked her. Annette stared up at him, a lump forming in her throat. “I never wanted this for you, Annette,” he said, solemn as ever. “A noble title means nothing if this – if this is what it drove you to.”

“We’re past that conversation, Gustave, we have to be,” Fantine said before Annette could reply. “What do you think they’re going to do to you after this? You think the Empire will look kindly on enemy generals once it’s overtaken all of Fódlan? Do you really want your last conversation with your daughter to be about disappointment?”

Gustave flicked his eyes to Fantine, and then back to Annette. He studied her in the dim light, his eyes narrowing. “So that’s the way the war is going, then,” he said slowly. “My child, siding with the Empire.”

Annette glanced back at her uncle, who listened passively, who loved Dominic, whose allegiances were so similar and so impossibly different from her own. She didn’t know if she could trust him – she was fairly sure she couldn’t – but she doubted she could surprise him, at this point.

She stepped up close, angling her head up to look at her father. “This isn’t about siding with anyone, Father,” she said carefully. “This is about walking forward. This is the  _ only _ way I can walk forward. I wish – I wish you would listen to me.”

Her father dropped her mother’s hand, angling himself towards Annette, looking down at her curiously. “Tell me one thing, Annette, that I don’t quite understand,” he said finally. “Are you marrying this boy because you love each other? Or is this a matter of practicality?”

Annette could not tell what the correct answer was, in the moment. She didn’t know what would get her father to agree to attend her wedding. She didn’t know which answer would pass as truth for her uncle, which would stave off her mother’s questions and meddling. She didn’t know what would get them out of Dominic alive. She just knew, suddenly and unavoidably, that if this was truly the last time she was to see her father, she couldn’t lie to him. That couldn’t be the last thing she said to him.

“It’s – it’s a political alliance, Father,” she said finally, and hurt to say it, but she couldn’t avoid it. “My feelings for Duke Fradlarius are – they were irrelevant when I accepted that match. As I say, I only seek a way out of Dominic.”

She perhaps expected this confession to be a more dramatic one. But her uncle barely moved, and her mother just gave her a sad, pitying look. And her father looked down at her and nodded slowly.

“I suspected as much,” he said finally. “That boy, he told me as much when he was here. I never thought you cynical, Annette, but desperate times often make us unrecognizable.”

“Wait – Felix told you – Felix said that?” Annette said. Something cold and heavy was settling in her chest, a realization and a reminder and a reality that she had worked hard to push away.

“I know I don’t – I don’t deserve to want things for you, Annette,” her father continued. “But I did want you to marry someone who loved you, and who you loved. Of all the ways I’ve failed you – I'm sorry the world has made you desperate.”

“Felix said he doesn’t love –” Annette said, and cut herself off, willing herself to think straight, even as an unpleasant ringing was developing in the back of her ears.

“Gustave, I  _ told _ you now is not the time,” her mother said sharply, grabbing at the bar next to his hand and pulling herself inwards. “We’re all desperate, now. There’s nothing unusual in desperation during wartime. I’m asking you to give your daughter one last memory to hold onto, despite the desperation. Can you maybe focus on that?”

Her father looked surprised, as if he couldn’t simultaneously remember that his wife and his daughter were both talking to him. He looked over at Fantine, reaching toward her, then burying his face in his hands instead. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I know my actions have caused you –”

“I told you already, I don’t  _ care _ ,” cried Fantine, and she couldn’t reach him through the bars, and the anguish in her voice implied she cared quite a bit. “Just come to the wedding tomorrow, and you’ll have the rest of your life – what’s left of it – to think about how  _ sorry _ you are.” She pulled away at this, stumbling back, nearly tripping as she moved away from the cell. Gérald moved to catch her, the first thing he’d done all evening to distinguish him from a statue, but Fantine batted his hands away, silence and distance settling on the family as they stared at each other through the torchlight.

It was Gérald who spoke, finally, seeming far away to Annette’s ears, although he was so close she could still benefit from the light of his torch. “I’ll send men down for you tomorrow, brother, an hour before the wedding,” he said as if the matter was settled. “We can lay out clothes for you in advance; I know you’re smart enough not to try to run – more than my troops stand guard around the castle. Cornelia has been here for many days now.”

To Annette’s surprise, her father nodded slowly at this. “Of course I know not to run, Gérald,” he said. “The goddess decides my fate now; I would be foolish to try to change it when the odds are so against me.”

“So – so you’re coming?” Annette blurted out, and clasped her hand against her mouth, feeling she might jinx it.

Her father looked down at her gravely, and she wanted there to be tenderness in his eyes so badly, but she couldn’t find it. “Everything I’ve done in my life has been to protect this Kingdom and the people who live in it,” he said. “And I’ve failed my Kingdom and I’ve failed my people and I’ve failed you, Annette. And this wedding is a reminder of how much I’ve failed you.”

“That . . . so you’re coming?” Annette said, again, because it didn’t  _ sound  _ like he was.

Gustave nodded. “I cannot believe you marry this boy out of selfishness. I’m sorry I cannot give you a better parting gift, but if this is what you want –”

“It is, Gustave,” her mother interrupted, and Annette was glad, as she was having trouble concentrating on the conversation. “Thank you.”

“Until tomorrow, Gustave,” Annette heard her uncle say, and suddenly she was being gently pushed towards the stairs, away from her father, his words still ringing in her ears.

_ I did want you to marry someone who loved you. _

__

_ The world has made you desperate. _

__

_ That boy, he told me as much. _

__

“I’ve got to go find Felix,” Annette exclaimed when they reached the top of the stairs, her uncle shutting the heavy door leading down to the dungeons behind them. “He’ll want to know – I should probably tell him.”

He’d want to know that their plan could work. That he had an opportunity to help Dimitri’s top general escape from imprisonment, at last. That marrying her wasn’t just a futile exercise.

_ My feelings were irrelevant _ .

_ He told me as much _ .

Annette’s mother looked at her curiously, reaching down and brushing her bangs out of her eyes momentarily. “Annette, dear, are you okay?” she asked with concern. “You’re looking awfully pale.”

“I’m fine, Mother,” Annette replied, but her voice was shaky and thin and unconvincing.

Fantine wrapped her arms around Annette and pulled her close, and it felt like a childhood Annette knew she couldn’t recover. “It’s hard to see him, I know,” she murmured into her hair. “You were very brave, my darling girl.”

“I’m glad he said yes,” Annette said, pushing back slightly, untangling herself from the comfort her mother was offering. “I’m – I truly wouldn’t want to have this wedding without him.” She took a deep breath and stood up straight. “I’m going to go tell Felix the good news, and then I think I’ll head to bed. Make excuses for me with Great Aunt Mildred and company, won’t you?”

Fantine smiled weakly. “Perhaps Gérald can make excuses for the both of us. I don’t think I can take much more conversation, this evening.”

“Rest well, Annette, it’s a big day tomorrow,” said Gérald, unknowingly, leaning down to kiss her on the top of her head. He turned to Fantine. “I can walk you back to your room, Fantine, if you would –“

“Thank you, Gérald dear,” Fantine interrupted. “But I’ll be fine on my own.”

Annette had already started up the stairs towards the upper floors as Fantine turned on her heels and walked away. Gérald sighed before turning to walk in the opposite direction. Three parallel and isolated sets of footsteps echoed through the halls of Castle Dominic.

_ Gérald, _

_ I have received the letter you sent me. I threw it in the fire, and I suggest you throw this in the fire as soon as you’ve read it. Perhaps throw the rest of my letters in the fire, as well. _

_ He’s my husband, Gérald. He’s your brother. And I love him. And I know you’re angry with him, but to imply he could so fully forget his family – or that we could so fully forget him. It defies description. That is not the man I married. _

_ Please take some time before you write to me again. Focus your resources on finding your brother. I shall write to you in a year if we have not found Gustave by then. I’m sure in a few weeks you’ll regret your letter, and you’ll be glad that I burned it. There needn’t be a Lady at House Dominic. _

_ I must go. Write when you have news of Gustave, but please, not before. _

_ Desperately his, _

_ Fantine _

The castle had few balconies. Dominic was tucked away from trade routes and border disputes, so the castle itself had little need for watchtowers and parapets. The few that it did have were decorative, designed to offer ideal views of sunsets and mountains and meteor showers. Annette suspected, however, that Felix chose to stand on the balcony as a watchman, not a stargazer. Not that he had anything to watch for tonight – simply that he had been so trained to stand guard that keeping watch was his natural inclination.

It was easy to predict, as well, which of the half-dozen balconies she would find him on. It was the highest up, the hardest to find, and the only one that faced Fraldarius territory, somewhere in the distance. Not that he could see his home – even in daytime the mountains and forests would interfere, and the moon was waning tonight, leaving the whole of the territory shrouded in a darkness that the stars could not compensate for.

Felix leaned against the balcony, seemingly lost in his own world, and Annette was not fooled for a moment. She saw the way his hand moved towards his sword as she slipped out into the cool night air. It was an almost undetectable motion, made even more slight by how quickly he deduced she wasn’t an enemy, wasn’t a danger, and moved his hand back against the balcony. He knew she was there. He knew it was her. He didn’t turn to see her, content to stare at the skies until she approached.

She took a moment before she did approach, standing in the doorway leading back to the castle corridors, where she could still hear the hustle and bustle of family laughter from the lower floors. He was little more than a silhouette, even a mere few feet from her, but Annette drank in the outline. The sharp angles of his face, the restless movement of his slender fingers tapping slightly against the balcony railing, his asymmetric shift of his weight to one side as he always stood ready to move – she loved the broad strokes of Felix Fraldarius as much as loved the tiniest details that she could not see now, but that she knew were there. She knew his eyes were amber and honey and his fingers were calloused and gentle and his laugh was soft and velvet when he decided it was worth laughing. She knew it and yet she wanted to see it, wanted to feel it, wanted to hear it.

She loved him, and she was a fool.

Not for thinking he cared about her. Annette and Felix had been through enough in the past month that it would be foolish to  _ not _ think he cared about her. Circumstance threw them together, and adrenaline, and the occasional flash of thoughtless panic, but Annette was not so self-deprecating to believe that there wasn’t a real friendship between them. Felix admired her, and respected her, and wanted her to be safe and happy. That was more than she could say for so many of the people she’d loved in her life. But he’d told her from the first day that this was a pretense, that they were making things up as they went along, and that he’d told so many lies just to get to her that he could barely keep track of what was true. At the end of the day, only one thing  _ was _ true – he had proposed to her to get her out of Dominic. Emotion had never been a guiding factor. If she fell for the trap she herself had set, that wasn’t Felix’s fault. She couldn’t have him forever.

And she couldn’t stay standing in the doorway and staring forever, either. So she walked forward, taking her place at the balcony beside him.

Felix’s eyes flicked over to her as she leaned against the railing, although he didn’t turn towards her. Annette leaned over the railing to peer to the ground below, rising up on her tiptoes like she had as a child, but there wasn’t enough light to reach down even a few stories, and she looked only into shadows and silhouettes. She felt Felix’s hand slide around to the small of her back, anchoring her in place, and she couldn’t help but smile as she lowered herself back to the ground more fully. It was a familiar feeling, now, practically an old habit learned in less than a month. The nights were not as cold as when she first arrived at Dominic, but she appreciated his warmth, all the same.

“How’d it go?” he asked her, keeping his voice low, although Annette was fairly sure there was no one around to eavesdrop that this point in the evening, in this corner of the castle.

Annette looked up at him, and his features were hazy in the darkness, the light from the doors and windows of the castle casting him in half-shadow. He looked worried, as always. She smiled and his frown only deepened in curiosity.

“He agreed to it,” she said. “He’ll be at the wedding tomorrow.”

Felix let out a relieved sigh. He looked up at the stars, running his free hand through his hair, and sighed again. “That’s good,” he said. He looked back down at Annette. “That’s really good.”

“Yeah,” Annette said, and found her voice was quiet, as well, matching his. She offered another small smile. “We did it. We actually might pull this off.”

“Don’t count your victories too early,” Felix warned. “I’ll breathe easy when you’re in Fraldarius.”

“Which is  _ tomorrow _ ,” Annette reminded him, letting her natural optimism take over to counterbalance Felix’s relentless practicality. As it always did. Felix looked away again, but Annette grabbed his arm before he could roll his eyes – she knew he wanted to. “Felix, we’ll be in Fraldarius  _ tomorrow _ . We’re almost there. It wouldn’t kill you to smile,” she said 

Felix looked back at her and it was hard to see in the darkness but his expression seemed to soften. He reached down and brushed her hair back behind her ear, his hand on her back tugging her just a bit closer. “You smile enough for the both of us, Annie, I think,” he said quietly.

He was so close and so safe and so good and Annette wanted it to be tomorrow immediately and she wanted it to be tonight forever. She drew in a shaky breath and Felix’s eyes sharpened to focus on her, his gaze concerned. His hand ghosted over her cheek, tracing where Cornelia had left various cuts and bruises that had only recently been magicked away. She leaned into his touch without thinking, and then forced herself to pull back, looking up into his searching eyes, his pupils wide and darting in the darkness as he scanned her face. Annette wanted too much, always. Felix had tirelessly pursued rescue for her, for her family, for her territory, for her country. Even now, his hands were protective, his eyes were concerned – the Shield of Faerghus stood before her, whether he wanted to admit it or not, and he would do anything he could to defend her. And she wanted more. And he had told her it was all an act, from the beginning. And he told her father that he didn’t love her. And she still wanted more. Annette wished, for the first time, that she could settle for the life she was given. For now, all she could do, as always, was to make the best of what she had.

Annete stepped back, away from Felix, and he dropped his hands and let her go, a look of surprise flickering across his face. She took a deep breath and looked up at him. She tried to smile but she wasn’t sure if it worked.

“I have something I want to say,” Annette said, taking another breath as Felix tilted his head slightly. ”And I want to make sure I say it right, so give me time to talk through it.”

Felix blinked at her, then nodded. “Sure, go ahead,” he said, leaning his elbows back against the railing.

Annette nodded, more to herself than to him. She closed her eyes and grabbed onto the banister for balance – maybe more emotional balance than anything else. She heard Felix shifting in the darkness, but if he reached for her initially, he pulled away before his hands could find hers.

“I know that this past month isn’t what you signed up for, or wanted, and that you were mostly here by chance to begin with,” Annette started, keeping her eyes closed. “And I know it can’t have been easy, when you have so many other people you need to protect and so many other – when so many other people matter to you.” She opened her eyes and Felix was staring at her, open-mouthed but silent. She pressed on. “But I wanted to say thank you, before this is all over, for what you’ve done for me and for my family. You’ve had no reason to sacrifice what you have, and I think it really speaks to – well, what a noble person you really are. I’m sorry, don’t frown at me, it’s true.”

“I’m not – I’m not frowning,” Felix said, frowning. “Annette, I –”

“I’m almost done, I promise,” Annette said. Feeling brave, now that she’d started, she reached over and grabbed on to Felix’s hand, which was resting on the balcony railing beside them. He flinched, looking down at their hands and back up at her, bewildered. “I’m glad it was you, when it could have been anyone,” Annette explained. “I’m glad it was – someone I’m friends with. Someone I trust so much. And I hope, when this is all over and we don't have to pretend anymore, that we can keep being friends. I’d really like that, Felix. I – I hope you want that, too.”

Felix’s grip on her hand tightened momentarily, then he let go entirely. He took a step back from her, crossing his arms. The night air was cold. “Of course we can be friends, Annette,” he said, softly and kindly and desperately. “Of course – why would I want anything else?”

Annette nodded vigorously, relieved that he was listening, and that she had decided to talk to him, and that he seemed to understand. Still, she couldn’t stop herself now that she started, and she added anxiously, “And I’m sorry if I ever made it seem like – like I wanted this to be anything more than that. That was very foolish of me.” She was looking away now; she didn’t want to meet his stare, although she knew he was staring. “I didn’t mean to be so selfish. I hope that won’t spoil our friendship,” she said quietly, and she let the silence drift between them.

Felix finally spoke, although it didn’t sound like he entirely knew what he wanted to say. “Annette, I –” he started, and trailed off, silence enveloping them once more.

“I’m sorry,” Annette said, laughing, and her laughter was too breathy and caught in her throat and sounded wrong. “I’m not sure any of that made any sense at all.”

“No, no, I get it – I think I get it,” Felix said, turning to face her more fully, taking a step in. Annette felt her hair fall back as she looked up to him. He reached towards her, a repetition of earlier, but stopped himself. He crossed his arms again. “Of course you wouldn’t – of course I don’t want to keep up a charade any longer than we have to. You’re free to do whatever you want once we get out of here, Annette. Marry whoever you want. I’ll burn our marriage certificate the moment we leave these gates.” He paused, and his expression was unreadable, mostly in shadow and closed off even where he was illuminated. “There wouldn’t be much point to all of this if you weren’t free, right?” he asked softly.

Annette swallowed. A small part of her – a not small part of her – had hoped he would tell she was wrong, that her father was wrong, that Felix had meant every kiss and every smile and every careless hand on her back and every time he spoke in the future tense while her uncle was in earshot. But it was still the nicest rejection Annette had ever gotten, and she was well-schooled in rejections. And Felix still looked at her as if she was precious, as if she was worth protecting, even if she couldn’t parse the rest of the confusion and concern that flickered across his face as he looked down on her.

Annette wanted too much, always. She allowed herself that one last time. Balancing on her tiptoes again, she leaned up towards Felix, grabbing his arm for support. He looked surprised, but he reached for her automatically, holding her the same as he would were she leaning over a banister or walking down a flight of stairs or stumbling from a hit in battle. Annette’s lips graced Felix’s cheek, and she felt stubble and smelled cinnamon and heard his sudden, slight intake of breath as she pulled away, and the air seemed to change around them for a moment, although that might have just been that Annette had always read too many fairy tales growing up. They let go of each other at the same time, which was a breath too long by any metric, and Annette stumbled back, dazed by even that much of a kiss goodbye.

“Just – thank you,” she whispered, not to keep quiet, but because her voice was gone. “Thank you for everything.”

In a rare act of mercy from the goddess, Annette did not trip or fall as she turned and walked back inside, leaving Felix standing alone in starlight and shadow. If she had stumbled, he might have rushed to catch her, and Annette had enough to get through tomorrow without Felix Fraldarius seeing her cry.

_ Dear Gérald, _

_ You know as well as I do that this is not the letter I wanted to send, nor the timeline I wanted to send it on. I do not make a habit of begging. I’m begging now. _ _  
_

_ Fhirdiad lies in chaos. I fear for the future of our country just as I mourn the loss of our King. I had hoped, if we could stay here a bit longer, Annette would be able to enroll early in the school of Sorcery – she really is so bright; I’ve never seen such potential – and I could relocate with friends. But I worry with each passing day that I have no friends left, or I will have no friends left, and the few that are truly still loyal to our family have already begun plans to move away from the city. The name of Gustave Dominic holds little value now, and yet every day that I do not hear it is a day without water, and every day I do hear it is a drink, but from an ocean. _

_ I ask not for your support for my sake. I do not want it. But I have little with which to provide for Annette, and she does not deserve the life she has been given. I would like her to think that this is a family decision, that we are fulfilling the promise we made her so many months ago of spending the holidays together. I believe you will say yes to my request, because you love your brother, and because you love Annette. I will not waste your time providing other reasons. _

_ I can send Annette ahead to arrive in Dominic immediately, or we can travel together by the start of next Moon. I shall hold off on making plans until I hear from you, although I do not know what other options I have, at this point. Annette asked me to tell you that she managed to execute a triple cartwheel without falling this week. I do not tell you this to earn your pity, although I know that is how it appears. I just promised her that I would tell you, and I cannot bear another failed promise. _

_ Yours, _

_ Fantine _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s gonna be a great wedding!
> 
> If you want to reread Felix’s conversation with Gilbert, it’s in, like . . . .chapter 12? Why is this fic so long. Anyway I had to reread it to remember what they said; it’s back there if you’re interested. 
> 
> Also, very important side note, I don’t know the first thing about wedding dresses (or any dresses, really) but if you want to see some low-backed dresses with short bell sleeves, [ then Tiffo’s art over on twitter continues to delight.](https://twitter.com/relic_crusher/status/1272715887443730432) Poor Felix. Poor, ruined Felix Fraldarius.
> 
> Back in a couple of weeks, I think! In the meantime send me headcanons about what a church of Seiros wedding looks like. My Midwestern Protestant upbringing has not prepared me for this much stained glass and liturgy.
> 
> Hugs and kisses!
> 
> [ (I’m on twitter; RTing all the good art and telling you about my favorite soup recipes; come follow me.) ](https://twitter.com/Rose3Writes)


	18. Felix Gets Married

Felix had never dreamed about his wedding. He’d never expected to live past 20, for one thing. It sometimes seemed a cruel trick from the goddess that he had, as he was reminded by the empty guest list on the Fraldarius side of the aisle. But even at 22, he was designed for fighting, not for peacetime. It was absurd to expect someone to sign up for that sort of life with him, and it was more absurd to think he would lay down his sword for anyone or anything else. So a marriage was not really worth imagining, for Felix. And a wedding was even less worth imagining.

It was somehow worse than he’d ever imagined, regardless.

Castle Dominic was swarming with people and activity, dozens of people he didn’t know and didn’t bother to remember. Annette had seemed most eager for him to remember her relatives, but her uncle was invested in diplomatic relationships, and as various dignitaries and minor noble families from western Faerghus arrived at the castle the morning, Felix felt himself performing increasingly absurd acrobatic feats to avoid having conversations about negotiation and diplomacy. On the day of his wedding, no less. The man had no shame.

Although, despite the general chaos of the morning, there wasn’t a lot Felix could actually contribute to. He had been told in no uncertain terms by both Gérald and Annette (and, in a rather insulting turn of events, in a postscript in a letter from Matthew) that it would not be appropriate to spend the morning at the training grounds, so he crossed that off the list. He’d already packed and checked that his and Annette’s trunks were stored securely in the carriage so that they could depart after the ceremony. He’d been lucky enough to run into Abel while uselessly wandering the grounds that morning, and managed a half-hour of small talk about weapons and battalion formations, but the fact Felix was seeking out small talk indicated how dire things were. But no one had any use for him in the castle – he couldn’t contribute to the final planning for a household that was not his own, and neither the servants nor the seamstresses nor Annette’s large collection of aunts had any intention of letting him anywhere near Annette before the ceremony started.

That was, of course, the worst of it. Logically, Felix knew it was unlikely that anything bad would happen to Annette – or even  _ could _ happen to her, when she was the central focus of so many people that cared about her that morning. In practice, it was actually starting to be physically painful to hear constant snatches of conversation and discussion and whispers about her only to be told he was not allowed to see her. It wasn’t menace or conspiracy, just the good natured superstition of a family that seemed to find it quite charming whenever he tried to find out exactly where she was at any given time that morning, as they smilingly reminded him that he’d have the rest of his life to talk to her. It set Felix’s teeth on edge and made his sword arm itch. He told himself it was because they were so close to pulling this plan off, and there was still so much that could go wrong, and everything just felt safer and more secure when he could actually talk to Annette about it. He pushed their conversation from last night out of his mind, ignoring the final, pitying look she’d given him before she’d left him on the balcony. He pushed away the memory of her lips grazing his cheek, soft and sweet and sorry.

Felix wasn’t a fool. He knew that seeing Annette wouldn’t undo their conversation from the night before. It wouldn’t make her magically decide to love him; she’d been clear enough that she did not, even if she didn’t want to hurt him. He knew he couldn’t change things, that even if she smiled at him again, it wouldn’t erase the pity in her eyes from the night before, that even if she sang again, her songs would never be for him. Felix wouldn’t lie to himself anymore. He knew that.

He just wanted to see her, that was all.

By late morning, Felix was frustrated and impatient and probably on the verge of causing at least one diplomatic crisis. Barred from the training grounds and Annette, he wandered to the library, which had been the only other reasonably happy place in the castle for him that past month, and which he would almost miss, maybe, someday.

The library had not seen much use in recent weeks – barring Annette’s marathon study sessions and an occasional meeting place for Gérald, Felix doubted whether the library saw much use, ever. He wandered over to the fireplace where he had last sat with Annette, although no fire was lit now. The furniture had been shifted back into place by unseen hands, and Annette’s collections of pillows and knickknacks had at some point been cleared away, but it still reminded Felix uncannily of the last time he had been inside the library, watching the fire burn to nothing as Annette rested against him, his book of childhood memories forgotten in his lap. Felix offered the fireplace a small smile of thanks for being so good as to burn slowly. The fireplace made no reply. The stack of books Annette had proposed for the evening still lay on the side table against the couch, and, having nothing better to do, Felix settled into the couch and pulled the first book off the stack, hoping it would at least pass the time.

He felt, vaguely, that he recognized the tale as soon as he started it, so he skipped to the end to check. He was horrified to remember that this account of Sir Dagonet ended when the man was slain at his brother’s wedding, a senseless blood feud that solved nothing and helped no one. Deciding the timing was off for that particular tale, Felix tossed it to the side and selected the next one from the stack. Unfortunately, it appeared to be the tale of a foolish knight who, rather than siding with Loog, devoted his allegiance to a minor lord that was power-hungry and tyrannical, and the author took great pleasure in detailing the misfortunes of the knight, who lost such happiness and earned such grief in his choice of liege.

Felix was almost relieved to hear the door to the library click open, if only so he wouldn’t have to read about yet another woeful trial of a foolish knight that he didn’t really like very much and was fairly certain would die at the end. He expected one of Gérald’s friends, or Gérald himself, or maybe just a maid with very strange timing for dusting the shelves. His heart dropped, and then raised, when Annette snuck into the library, quickly shutting the door behind her with a nervous glance out into the hallway.

She was nothing short of gorgeous. Felix had expected that, but it was still true, and his breath still caught. Her hair was swept up, gathered at the back of her neck, with a handful of pieces framing her face. Her dress seemed to float around her, fabric resisting gravity as the skirt pooled out and the sleeves fluttered with every slight movement, and at a glance it seemed that Annette herself was floating, as well. Even in the low lighting of the library, Felix’s gaze wandered to her eyes, deep and stormy blue and sparkling with life. He waited for those eyes to meet his, suddenly craving the way her eyes sharpened, or brightened, or focused when they landed on him in a crowd. He wondered how she knew he would be here, what had made her decide to seek him out, if she had spent any of the morning thinking about him amid the chaos of the castle and if a small part of her associated him with something steady, something solid –

Annette leaned against the closed door and started to reach her hands to her face, but thought better of it. Instead of smudging her makeup, she closed her eyes and let out the loudest sigh Felix had heard from her in months.

So evidently she wasn’t expecting him, or anyone else, to be there right now.

Felix avoided the temptation to see how long until she noticed he was there – it seemed worse to tease her on their fake wedding day, somehow – and coughed politely, but from Annette’s wild flailing at the sound, he suspected he was going to get called villainous names regardless. Landing with her arms in some sort of brawler’s offensive position (her form was terrible, but the dress couldn’t have made things easy), Annette quickly scanned the room, her eyes finally landed on Felix.

She smiled at him when he thought she would frown, and her eyes were so blue he felt like he was drowning.

“How’d you know I’d be here?” she sang out as she waltzed over to the couch, hiking up her train enough for him to see that she did still travel by foot, not levitation, which could possibly be a problem later, given Annette’s tendency towards tripping even in the best of circumstances.

“I was about to ask you the same question,” Felix said, unable to keep the wry amusement out of his voice as Annette flopped on the couch next to him, her skirt billowing out around her.

“I just needed some time to myself, this morning, I think,” Annette said. She smiled at him, wickedly. “Mother pretended she was having a fainting spell to distract everyone and I slipped out the back door.”

Felix snorted at the mental image. “You two are quite a team,” he said.

Annette’s smile faded, just a bit. “We are, sometimes, I think,” she said quietly. “It was just the two of us for so long, you know? I –” Annette stopped midsentence, and Felix realized suddenly that just because she was talking didn’t mean she actually wanted to continue saying anything. He reached over and covered her hand with his and she glanced at him, surprised. He realized too late that perhaps that was not a thing he should do anymore.

“If you want to be alone, I can leave,” he said, to make up for the fact he had reached for her hand, and because him leaving might have been what she needed. “I can go polish your castle’s sword collection, or try to count how many children your cousins have, or something.”

“Don’t be silly, you don’t count,” Annette said quickly, and Felix felt himself smile back at her, slightly, even as he pulled his hand away. Annette leaned over and looked at the book still in his lap. “Is that one of mine?” she asked, always tempted by books. “Do you like it? I thought you might like those.”

“ _ Why _ ?” Felix asked before he could stop himself. Annette frowned for a moment, and took the book from him, flipping through it.

“Just, you know,” she said. “Lots of death, everything’s kind of pointless, tons of unhappy endings.”

“You really do think I’m evil,” Felix said, raising an eyebrow at her.

Annette rolled her eyes. “You’re the one who always talks about how much he hates knights,” she muttered. “Would you have preferred something about noble chivalry with a beautiful princess and the whole thing ends with giant wedding? That’s what all the others are like.”

Felix winced. “When you put it like that, then no,” he admitted. “I think I’ve had my fill of weddings, after today. And I was never one for chivalry to begin with.”

He looked over at Annette and realized he’d probably said something wrong; she clutched the book a little too tightly, frowning down at it, or her lap, pointedly not looking back at him. Felix reached out and took the book back, and Annette let go without a fight. She finally looked up as he reached over to replace it on the stack of other dismal stories of knighthood. “I am sorry things got this far, you know,” she said quietly. “I know this wasn’t really how you wanted things to go when you showed up here.”

Felix suddenly didn’t know what to do with his eyes, or his hand, or his situation, and it seemed very important that he figure it out soon. When Annette had kissed him last night, it had seemed final, and certain, and like a goodbye. He saw the same sense of resignation in her eyes right now. He hated it.

Felix crossed his arms and fixed his eyes on the fireplace, although the fire had died long ago. “If you think about it,” he said slowly. “I came to Dominic to make an offer of marriage. So really, I got everything I asked for when I showed up here.”

“You don’t have to say that,” Annette mumbled.

“You look nice today,” Felix said quickly, almost cutting her off in his hurry to get the words out. He looked over at her, finally, and was rewarded with a blush spreading her cheeks. “I mean, your dress is – you’re just very – you look really nice, Annette.”

Annette smiled, first to herself, then at him, and he saw something familiar and playful dancing in her eyes as she looked up at him. “You’ve been practicing your compliments, I take it?” she asked him, and he was relieved to hear an echo of laughter in her voice, even if she was laughing at him. “That one was really good, you know.”

“I’m just trying to be nice,” Felix grumbled, looking away again, but he snuck a glance back at her, blushing and laughing and pleased with herself, and it felt normal and it felt right. “And I don’t need to  _ practice _ ,” he added defensively. “You make it easy.”

Annette’s eyes widened at this, caught off guard. “Do I?” she wondered. She leaned forward, and Felix turned towards her without thinking. “Is there anything else you want to add, then?” she asked softly.

Felix uncrossed his arms, still unsure what to do with them, and even more unsure what to say, now. He reached towards her, and when she didn’t move away, he lifted her chin up so her eyes met his more fully. “Annette Dominic, you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met,” he said, because if he couldn’t think of what else to say he might as well be honest. He brushed a stray piece of hair from her forehead, adding quietly, “And you’re going to make some guy ridiculously happy when you actually marry him.”

_ And he won’t deserve you _ , Felix thought, but only to himself, pushing back an ugly, jealous part of him that railed against some hypothetical suitor he’d never even meet. Maybe he’d get lucky and die on the battlefield before he had to deal with a wedding invitation from Annette. Maybe she’d choose a worse dress, the second time around – although Felix suspected his heart would stop no matter what she was wearing, that there was no wedding he could attend, no detail Annette could choose, where she wouldn’t hold him captive as she walked down the aisle.

Annette stared back at him. Her eyes grew wide – in surprise, Felix hoped, but maybe in horror – and she leaned towards him in a heartstopping moment. Then she swallowed, hard, and pulled away, pushing herself off the couch and wobbling to her feet, catching her balance before Felix could move to offer assistance. Her smile flickered, something worried and desperate behind her eyes, and Felix wished, as usual, that he hadn’t said anything at all. But it was gone in a moment, and she offered him a brave smile, not nearly as teasing as the one he’d seen moments ago.

“Well,” she said, taking a breath. “No one’s going to top that, I don’t think.” She glanced over her should at the door, although no one was there. “I guess they’re probably looking for me, huh?” she said, and Felix nodded wordlessly, vaguely worried he’d find another way to mess things up, even in something as simple as a goodbye. “I’ll see you at the church,” Annette said. “I hope that – I think you’re –” she leaned forward and grabbed his hands again, a reversal of his early movement, her ring sparkling in the sunbeam from the window behind them. “I’m glad I got to see you, before – all of this,” she finally said. “I’m glad it could be just us, one last time.”

She pulled away and slipped out the library door, back into the chaos of the late morning, leaving Felix with the stacks of pointless plots and unhappy endings.

***

The wedding was to be held in the local church. The Empire’s disdain for the Church of Seiros had not spread beyond its own borders, and the Dukedom seemed momentarily uninterested in reinventing religious traditions, so the Dominics were safe in their provincial piety for the time being. The church was set atop a small hillside adjacent to the local town, less than a mile’s walk from the estate. Annette and her mother would travel by carriage, but as the roads were easy and the weather was fair, most wedding attendees found it easier to walk, Felix included. He kept far behind a particularly large group of Annette’s cousins, but he was luckily not overtaken by any guests from behind finding a sudden burst of speed, and he was able to spend the walk quietly, thoughtfully, carefully listing all the things that could go wrong in the next six hours.

But none of those things happened on his walk to the church, other than a little dust gathering on his shoes, which Felix thought would be manageable. The church looked small as he approached it, and it was more difficult to avoid polite conversation in enclosed spaces, so he veered around to the side of the church, ducking out of the sight of the arriving guests and seeking shelter from both the wall of the church and on overgrown oak a few steps away. Felix carefully balanced his foot against the jagged stone wall, inspecting his shoe with a frown. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, uselessly fighting against the dirt clinging to his heel. He could practically hear Sylvain mocking him in the back of his head.

“A little late to be polishing shoes, isn’t it, Felix dear?” Cornelia’s voice fluttered by his ear, a mixture of honey and cyanide, and Felix took back all his hypothetical insults to the imaginary Sylvain, who quickly disappeared altogether. He slammed his foot back on the ground and turned in time to see her suppress a smile. “Was there no one at all in the castle that could help you this morning? Brides do soak up all the attention, don’t they?”

“Did you miss the entrance to the church, Cornelia?” Felix asked, leaning against the wall and crossing arms. “You must have walked right by it. It’s the giant double doors at the front. Where everyone else is going.”

“Felix, you’re always so funny,” said Cornelia. “Is that what she likes about you?”

She surprised him by leaning up against the wall next to him, giving him an appraising glance as she did so. “Your military dress is still Kingdom-issued, I see,” she said, a strain of petty bitterness in her voice that didn’t surprise Felix at all. “I’m surprised Gérald wasn’t able to find you something more fitting for the Dukedom.”

“You know, funniest thing. I forgot to ask,” said Felix. He tugged on one sleeve uneasily, feeling every movement heightened under Cornelia’s watchful eye. He hadn’t needed formal military attire in over two years. Balls and formal gatherings were in short supply after Dimitri’s supposed execution, and he certainly didn’t need to look impressive on the battlefield. His jacket didn’t seem to quite fit in the shoulders, but the asymmetrical column of buttons still fastened properly down his left side, drawing a brass line up and over his heart. Felix was glad Matthew had found his uniform; wearing his father’s – or worse, Glenn’s – would have been a psychological battle he didn’t want to deal with today. It was an obnoxiously elaborate uniform that would have done him absolutely no favors on an actual battlefield, but he’d dispensed of the medals and other accoutrements, and it was unassuming enough. Except nothing was ever unassuming enough to escape Cornelia’s attention.

“We’ll have to get you something better,” she said, with one final disparaging full-body look. “When are you coming to visit me in Fhirdiad?”

Felix grimaced, but “never” wasn’t actually an option. “Next moon, perhaps?” he suggested. “I can write to you from Fraldarius to confirm, but my hands are going to be full for the next few weeks.”

Cornelia smirked. “Yes, I suppose they will be.” Felix’s frown only made her smirk more self-satisfied. “But does it really take that long to secure an heir? We could have you in Fhirdiad by next week if you put your mind to it. Bring her along, if you want – she doesn’t seem to mind a little danger.”

“Is now really the time for this conversation?” Felix asked through gritted teeth. His sword was once again ceremonial but he rested his hand against it, all the same.

“I guess I’m just trying to understand,” Cornelia said. She placed her finger on the side of her chin and tilted her head, looking at Felix with curiosity. “You made it fairly clear to me when I arrived that this match was for political expediency – clever, to find a Dominic to help you further your family line. They’re not really in a position to refuse, are they? But your actions these past few days – I’m starting to doubt there wasn’t at least  _ some _ emotion involved in your decision.”

“I never pinned you as such a hopeless romantic,” Felix snapped, cutting off whatever theory she was going to propose next. “It’s a shame we’re not doing toasts at the reception, I’m sure that one would have brought down the house.”

“I’m just trying to help, darling,” Cornelia said sweetly. “You’re new to this whole territory leader thing; I get that. And I suppose I don’t have to tell you this, Duke Fraldarius, but do keep an eye on your wife beyond how pretty she looks in a wedding dress. I sincerely doubt that her allegiances are to the Dukedom the way we might want them to be, at present. And she has a knack for . . . causing trouble, if not supervised.”

“I’m sure you have better things to do than micromanage my domestic affairs, Cornelia,” Felix said tersely. He didn’t look at her.

“Lamb, your personal happiness is none of my concern,” Cornelia said easily. “But I do worry that you’re letting your affection – how to put this? That dear Miss Dominic may attempt to convince you to make poor decisions, for the Dukedom and your territory and yourself.” Cornelia leaned in, and Felix shifted slightly away from her. His uniform was too hot for the late spring sun; he very much wanted to go inside. “She wants you for what she can get from you; surely you aren’t so foolish to not know that?” Cornelia asked, her voice low and pitying and a confusing approximation of kind. “I know you’re quite taken with her, but you mustn’t let infatuation blind you to how she’s using you. Use her however you will, it’s not my business, but keep your own interests in sight, Felix dear.”

“Lady Fraldarius,” Felix muttered, looking at his shoes. He’d bounced his toe against the ground, a repeated, nervous habbit, and they were scuffed again.

Cornelia blinked at him. “I beg your pardon?”

“She’s Lady Fraldarius now, not Miss Dominic,” Felix corrected again, louder this time. “Or she will be, momentarily.” He turned and looked at Cornelia. “With your position in the Dukedom, you should be more attentive to titles, Cornelia.”

“I never thought I’d hear a lecture on etiquette from you,” Cornelia said, her smile dropping. “I tell you this all as your friend and ally, Duke Fraldarius. And, frankly, as Miss Dominic’s friend and ally, as well.” She cast a careless glance towards the road leading to the church, where now only the slowest members of Annette’s family were still walking. “The past few days have given me much think about regarding Dominic’s place in the future of our country. Your bride has always been  _ unfortunate _ for their standing, I’m afraid.” She shot Felix a glare that was malice and warning and little else. “Figure out how to keep  _ Lady Fraldarius _ in her place, is my advice. She endangers more than Fraldarius with her recklessness, and some territories can’t afford to be unprotected these days.”

“Perhaps you had better go find a seat in the sanctuary,” Felix snapped, cutting her off and gesturing towards the church again. “The ceremony will be starting soon, I’m sure.” He walked past her before she could reply, and stopped at the edges of the church, turning back for a moment. “If I don’t see you before we leave for Fraldarius, safe travels,” he added insincerely. “I’ll see you in Fhirdiad soon enough, you needn’t worry about that.”

The small and dark sanctuary seemed infinitely more welcoming than it had twenty minutes prior, and for once, Felix was happy to lose himself in the crowd.

***

When Felix thought back on his wedding, he remembered it mostly as music.

There were the toccatas and canons, of course, piped through the sanctuary by the small but respectable organ in the front corner. The church adjacent to the Dominic Estate served a small, sleepy village, and Annette’s extended family almost filled up the entirety of the sanctuary. The ceiling was high, though certainly not as high as the cathedrals Felix had grown up attending, forced by his father and occasionally by Glenn and finally, less often, by Ingrid. The sound was duller, somehow, less expansive, but the organ’s overlapping themes and counter-melodies ricocheted off the wooden beams of the vaulted ceiling, all the same. The effect was impressive but claustrophobic, and Felix leaned against the back wall of the church, offering silent, curt nods to anyone who looked dangerously close to speaking with him, as if it would offer him some escape. He looked at the lone stained-glass window at the front of the church, a simple but reverent depiction of the goddess, and waited for Gérald to signal to him that the ceremony was about to begin. Felix wondered if he should pray, before things got underway. He wondered what men usually prayed for on their wedding days, and if there was much overlap between what they usually asked for and what he currently wanted. He’d just decided it would take too long to explain the situation to the goddess when the organ reached a final, concluding chord that had to be at least a dozen notes despite the organist only having 10 fingers, and Felix found himself stumbling towards the front of the church amidst the final, clattering notes finding their way into resolution.

Once the ceremony began, there were the hymns to the goddess, led by a quartet of singers that had devoted their lives to the church and the nobility and clearly had little overlap between the two in the past two years. If their harmonies were shaky, they made up for it in piety. The lighting was low enough in the church that when the back doors opened, Felix was momentarily blinded by the sudden flood of sunlight as Annette walked into the sanctuary, clutching her father as if he might run away at any moment. Which, Felix realized, was not entirely a metaphorical concern. But Gilbert would have been hard pressed to escape the dozens of eyes that settled on him as he made his way down the aisle – or rather, on his daughter as she dragged him along. Annette didn’t look at him as she walked down the aisle, her eyes mostly focused on the ground ahead of her, with the occasional glance and nervous smile spared for her eager relatives on either side of the aisle. Felix was unsurprised that she was beautiful, unsurprised that no one in the room could look away, unsurprised that his feelings of longing and devotion concentrated to such a point that he could scarcely breathe. The soprano behind him reached for some unearthly high pitch, and Annette looked up and saw him for the first time, and the breath rushed back into his lungs as if she had been the one to give him oxygen.

And then, most strikingly, there was Annette herself, and her music. There was her actual voice, of course, as she sang along softly to the final hymn before the priest began his homily. Felix could barely hear his own voice, and certainly paid little attention to the chorus around him, as he tracked her melody line, practiced but shaky. He felt the same wicked, greedy thrill that he’d felt the first time he stood near Annette during a choir practice at Garreg Mach, like he was stealing a gift meant for the goddess, like he was taking something back that she couldn’t take away from him. Annette looked up at him on the final chorus, and her whole face flushed when she realized he had been staring, and her song dropped so low he could no longer hear it. Perhaps, Felix thought, the goddess had the last laugh, after all.

But even as the hymn faded and Annette stepped closer to Felix, their hands entwined, Felix heard her song throughout the ceremony. He heard it in her breathing, steady and practiced and intentional until it was not, until it caught, until she looked at him and he tried to smile and he was pretty sure he didn’t succeed but her breathing returned to normal again, all the same. He heard music as she tapped her foot, impatiently, nervously, a syncopated rhythm against silence that she always thought no one would notice. He heard, even more than he felt, the music in her rapid pulse, just beyond his reach, and in the way her thumb traced against his knuckle absently, a faint rustle of her gloves against his. Annette was music, everything about her was music, he was marrying a song in human form and he still couldn’t get her out of his head.

“- for love everlasting, until the goddess accepts you back into her arms?” the priest said, somewhere in the peripheral of Felix’s mind. 

There was a beat of silence, and then Annette squeezed both of Felix’s hands, and he snapped back into reality.

“Right! I do,” he said, hurriedly. His own grip tightened around Annette’s fingers. For a moment she seemed to want to laugh, her eyes sparkling at him with amusement that was strangely normal.

His answer seemed to appease everyone, and the priest continued on with the vows.

And in the background, somewhere beyond the organ and the choir and Annette’s singing and breathing and existing, there was the thrum of people watching them, the dozens of eyes upon them as the congregation joined their own voices to the hymns and their own baited breath to the proceedings. There was the smattering of irreverent applause when Felix leaned in to kiss Annette after the priest declared their marriage sanctified in the eyes of the goddess, her fingers tangling themselves against his jacket, his hand on her waist as he guided her towards him and then carefully set her back on her own two feet. There was the rustling and excitement as the crowd turned in their seats to watch Annette and Felix walk back down the aisle, out of the church and into that blinding sun, where an open-air carriage waited to take them back to the castle for the reception.

Felix helped Annette into the carriage with one hand on her back and another at her elbow, but she navigated the climb with more steadiness than she had any right to, given her track record. The smile she gave him as she settled into the seat was triumphant and knowing, and he rolled his eyes at her even as he bit back a grin. He climbed in after her and the carriage rattled off towards the castle, leaving the small church behind and taking an impossible promise with them. And Felix could only remember it as music: lyrics that he could not make out with a meaning more significant than he could ever piece together, and melody that he could not recreate that he would play in the back of his mind for the rest of his life.

He looked over Annette and she was staring at him, nervously, tentatively, as if she didn’t know him. He realized her hands, underneath her delicate white gloves, were shaking. For the second time that day Felix reached out and grabbed her hand without thinking, but she took encouragement from him this time, and she threw her arms around his shoulders, burying her face in his neck for a perfect, solitary moment.

“We’ve almost done it,” she whispered against him, and Felix was sure the driver couldn’t hear, her voice was so soft. “We’ve almost won.”

And Felix would have told her loved her, followed the music to its logical conclusion, but she was shaking and she was scared and she was hopeful and he’d done enough to her over the past month without making her deal with the fallout of his own selfish emotions. And if he couldn’t love her, he could protect her, so he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her closer, hoping that would make her tremble less even as he feared it would do the opposite.

“I’ll get you home,” he whispered back, and she shivered against him, and then she was still, and she didn’t pull away until the gates of the castle came into view on the horizon.

*

Felix lost track of how many times he kissed Annette during the reception. Between the constant hints from relatives and the combination of outdated reception traditions involving clattering glasses and silverware together when the two walked by, it comprised a much larger percentage of his afternoon than he’d initially anticipated. He wasn’t sure if this was a ritual unique to the Dominic family or if it was common in weddings across Fódlan, as he had never actually made it longer than thirty minutes into a wedding reception before Ingrid or Glenn or any sufficiently arrogant acquaintance lured him to the back gardens for a sparring match. In retrospect, Felix decided, all of his decisions in his wild and reckless adolescence were absolutely justified. Wedding traditions, like chivalry, were only vaguely entertaining on paper and deeply absurd and disconcerting in practice.

It was nice to kiss Annette, however, he had to admit that much. She held his arm very tightly with one hand and his face very gently with the other. And she did smile at him, sometimes, when she pulled away, as if she was laughing at the absurdity with him. Ironically, this only made him wish it were less absurd.

The banquet was impressive, Felix gathered, although he and Annette had little time to enjoy it. They were initially seated at the head of one of the long tables in the ballroom, but the throng of people stopping by to pay their well wishes was so overwhelming they couldn’t manage a bite of food between greetings, and they had the distinct disadvantage of being trapped in one place for as long as their well-wishers chose to stay. Annette dug her fingernails into the back of Felix’s hand at the third extended joke about their upcoming wedding night, and Felix pushed his chair back so suddenly he almost knocked it over, surprising the third cousin into silence long enough for him to suggest they made the rounds of the ballroom themselves.

Annette held onto him rather tightly as he guided her around to their third row of seats, and Felix glanced down at her, her cheeks pink and her knuckles white.

“You okay?” he asked softly.

“Yeah,” Annette said unconvincingly. He pulled her back for a moment, a step away from the next line of guests they needed to greet, and she looked up at him. “This just seems like the part where everything goes wrong,” she admittedly quietly. “The part where I mess something up.”

“Hey, we’re through the wedding,” Felix said. Optimism wasn’t his strong suit, and he was unnerved that Annette’s fears matched his own so closely. “We’re like seventy percent of the way there, at this point. Almost done.”

“The wedding wasn’t the hard part, Felix,” Annette said. “Marrying you was the easy part. The hard part is going to be –”

She snapped her mouth shut as her great-aunt Mildred teetered towards them, wearing an elaborately embroidered dress that Felix vaguely suspected doubled as a dressing gown when she wanted it to. At this point Felix could only commend her for her knack for timing; it  _ had _ to be on purpose.

“I think I will get some cake, Felix, you’re right,” Annette said loudly, cheerfully, with shining smile directed only at him and also at everyone in the room who might be watching. She looked over to Mildred. “Would you like me to get you a slice, Auntie Mildred?” she asked sweetly, with what Felix suspected was genuine affection.

“Don’t you worry about me, dear,” Mildred said in her creaking, reedy, adoring voice. “You always did have such a sweet tooth. I’ll hold on to your husband for you until you get back.” And she slipped her arm in Felix’s and beamed at Annette, and Felix had to admit there was a family resemblance in the eagerness to make sure everyone in the world got as much cake as they wanted.

Annette was gone for the first time in their marriage, and Felix missed her, which was dumb of him, because he could literally see her getting a piece of cake for herself and also they weren’t actually married. Or they were actually married but it didn’t actually count, and he couldn’t actually see her through the crowd but he still knew exactly what she looked like, leaning over the cake with her tongue between her teeth and she measured the exact perfect serving size. Maybe it was because he knew exactly what she looked like that he missed her, or because the wedding wasn’t real that the loss felt significant. It was hard to explain.

Maybe he just didn’t have a lot to say to Great Aunt Mildred.

He looked down at her, hesitantly. “Did you win at . . . cards, last night?” he offered, since Annette did seem to like her. He couldn’t remember exactly what game she had promised to teach him when they’d met yesterday; Annette knew about seven dozen parlor games and Felix knew zero and their respective families seemed to follow along those lines accordingly.

She looked up at him, ignoring his question. She leaned in conspiratorially. “I know your secret, young man,” she said to him, smiling.

“Oh. Wow!” Felix replied, very much hoping that wasn’t the case. “That’s, um, certainly something.”

“When you’re as old as me, it’s easy to spot,” Great Aunt Mildred explained sagely, closing her eyes dramatically. “I’ve seen this a million times before.”

“This . . . this case exactly?” Felix clarified. He was  _ fairly _ sure that his situation was more or less unique, but Great Aunt Mildred certainly spoke with authority.

She nodded with authority, too. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve seen exactly this before.” She looked up at Felix. “You can’t believe she married you, can you? Don’t believe she really loves you? It’s written all over your face.”

“Um?” Felix offered, craning his neck to see if Annette had found her cake yet. He’d hoped her ostentatious clothing would have made her easy to find in a crowd, but she remained remarkably short.

Great Aunt Mildred patted his arm. “Young lovers, so foolish, even when they think they’ve got it all figured out,” she cackled at him. “You’ll figure it out, don’t worry. You’ll both figure it out.”

“That's – huh – that’s really great to hear,” Felix said. He thought the saw a flash of white making its way towards them, so he turned his attention back to Great Aunt Mildred. “That’s great advice, really.”

“I know,” she said with another solemn nod. “Would you like a peppermint stick?”

“That’d be nice,” Felix said, and she slipped one into his hand just as Annette came back, carefully balancing a plate with two slices of cake topped with contrasting shades of frosting.

“You should really get some cake, Auntie Mildred,” she said cheerfully, taking another bite as she sidled back up to Felix. His slid his arm around her waist again. He could practically smell the sugar content of the frosting. “Did you two have a nice chat?” she added, covering her mouth with one hand, her mouth full of cake. She had lost her gloves at some point in the afternoon.

“Yeah, loved it,” said Felix, and Annette chose to ignore the sarcasm as she waved her aunt off towards the promise of desserts. “Which cake is better?” he asked absently.

Annette frowned thoughtfully. “They’re both pretty good. I should’ve asked for three kinds. You want a bite?” She waved the fork at him, crumbs flying everywhere.

“Absolutely not,” Felix muttered. “Do you feel better about the next forty-five minutes, at least?”

“Absolutely not,” Annette echoed, taking another bite of cake. “This is the worst day of my life.”

“Well, maybe our first anniversary will be better,” Felix deadpanned. He looked down at Annette, softening slightly as she leaned against him. He wasn’t sure she even realized she was doing it. “Almost there, I promise,” he murmured. “We’ve pulled off worse plans; we can make this one work.”

Annette might have had a rebuttal – Felix wasn't actually sure, at the moment, if they _ had _ pulled off any of their plans since he arrived in Dominic – but she was interrupted by yet another clattering of silverware and glasses, their wedding guests impatient that they had kept themselves to themselves for ten whole minutes.

Annette tasted like vanilla frosting when Felix kissed her.

*

Felix didn’t throw his weight around much during the days leading up to the wedding or the wedding itself, so he felt very little guilt when he used the full force of his newfound status in Annette’s life to bundle her out of the reception hall and towards their carriage to Fraldarius a mere two hours after the ceremony had ended. The journey to Fraldarius was long; he was sure Annette was tired; he preferred traveling during daylight hours, and so on and so forth. He doubted he’d lost much goodwill from her extended family, who were frankly already beginning to lose interested in the ostensible reason for the gathering and were moving on to swapping nostalgic stories and competing life updates. But also, he didn’t care much about goodwill from Annette’s extended family. He and Annette did have a long journey ahead of them. And the sooner they started, the better.

A crowd gathered outside to see them off as the carriage pulled into view. Felix had loaded their luggage in the back of the coach earlier that morning. It was a sensible and sturdy carriage, and would fit them both comfortably for the ride back, although he now rather wondered if he should have asked Gérald for something that was enclosed rather than open air. His eyes narrowed, however, when he landed on the driver of the carriage. He’d met so many people in the past 24 hours, let alone the past month, that he was starting to get them confused, but he was pretty damn sure he recognized that carriage driver.

“Isn’t that the night guard for your castle dungeons?” he asked Annette, leaning down and gesturing in what he hoped was a subtle motion. She looked over and her eyes focused in recognition, as well.

“Oh yes, it is,” she confirmed. “He’s nice; I threatened him with a sword once and he didn’t make a big deal about it at all later on.”

“That’s great,” Felix said, “But what’s he doing manning the carriage back to Fraldarius?”

Annette frowned, tilting her head to the side. “Jack of all trades? Hoping for a weekend vacation out of Dominic? Wanted to make sure I actually left?” she guessed, listing the options on her fingers. “Does it matter?”

“I’m gonna go talk to him,” Felix said, letting go of her and stepping away. “I’ll, um. I’ll meet you when we’re ready to go.”

He meandered over to the carriage, eyes flicking through the crowd. Fantine and Gilbert had pushed through and were talking to Annette now; her family seemed content to gather themselves in small pockets across the courtyard. Felix spotted Cornelia at the back wall, impassively watching the proceedings. Her own retinue of men were behind her by a few feet, but never far enough away to be forgotten. It looked like Gérald had once again appointed himself in charge of keeping her out of Fantine’s hair, and he engaged her in a conversation that looked important to Gérald and unbelievably boring to Cornelia. She glanced over at Felix and smiled with no warmth, and Felix looked away without a returning glance.

Felix walked around the far side of the carriage and approached the guard – the coachman? – who was seated atop the carriage now, experimentally fiddling with the reigns of the horses.

“Career change?” he asked casually, and the guard looked down at him, unsurprised that he was there. “I thought you were doing just fine as a night watchman; kind of a shame to lose that job right when things are going to quiet down again.

“Don't worry; I volunteered,” the guard said cheerfully. “That conversation they had last night was absolutely  _ dismal _ ; I needed a change of scenery. And,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “If her Ladyship _ does  _ stab you tonight, or sets your wedding bed on fire, or what have you, I want to be the first one to hear about it.”

“At what point do I just assume you legitimately care about my wife’s happiness?” Felix asked.

“Please don’t make such horrid accusations,” the guard said. “You make me sound downright sentimental. I’m just always curious what she’ll do next.”

“Should I be worried that you’re the one driving this thing?” Felix said, skeptically. He hoisted himself up onto the carriage, balanced on the wheel next to the driver’s seat. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” the guard said, blithe as ever. “Pull the reigns to make them turn; snap the reigns to make them go. If you can ride a horse, you can make drive a carriage.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” said Felix. He glanced over the guard’s shoulder and saw Annette walking with her parents towards the carriage. She was in deep conversation with Fantine; Gilbert followed behind them solemnly and silently as ever, still a mere ghost of a father and husband. Gérald hung back several feet behind them but seemed hesitant to come closer to the family unit, and for a moment, Felix almost pitied him, standing surrounded by his family and impossibly separate from them, all the same.

Felix started to raise his hand in greeting, but was distracted by a shadow, something off at the periphery of the scene. He glanced up quickly and saw the brief silhouette of a Pegasus knight ducking back behind the high tower of the castle behind them, appearing just briefly enough to scan the surroundings.

He looked back over to the guard, who was leaning forward to fiddle with the harness, now. “You’ve been an unusual friend to have this past month, you know,” he said slowly.

The guard smiled without looking back. “Aw, it’s nice to know you  _ do _ have feelings, buddy,” he said. “I was beginning to think you operated entirely on rage and bad decisions.”

Felix glanced over at Annette, standing with her family by the carriage. She looked past Fantine, who was in the middle of some very animated advice, and locked eyes with Felix. She slowly took one of her mother’s hands, halving the visual mobility of her storytelling, but Fantine didn’t seem to mind.

“Since we’re friends and all, I’m going to give you some advice,” Felix said, not taking his eyes off Annette.

“What’s that?” asked the guard, finally looking up.

Annette nodded at Felix. She didn’t smile. He nodded back.

“When you hit the ground, try to roll  _ away _ from the wheels,” Felix said. “And don’t follow after us.”

He grabbed the guard by the shoulders and threw him as far from the carriage as he could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent for too long on google and trying to find old music history textbooks to figure out if I could add a pipe organ before I remembered that at some point before this I’d referenced a piano. Not even a harpsichord; straight up pianofortes all over Fódlan. It’s fine. Fantasy rules. Chronology and history? I don’t know them. Enjoy your 4-voice toccatas; we have fun here.
> 
> I can probably get away with organs, but sadly, “yeet” was a bit too modern, so the chapter couldn’t end with “Felix yeeted the guard as far as he could.” But know in my heart and soul that that’s what I wanted to write.
> 
> You guys want to see some art? Some people have done scenes from this recently. [Here’s a delightful one](https://oneletterdiff.tumblr.com/post/620576478527143936/he-forced-himself-to-find-words-and-tried-speaking) from chapter 7. [ And this amazing one](https://twitter.com/nervmaid/status/1272770997322764296), also from chapter 7 (and the [ extremely good follow up ](https://twitter.com/nervmaid/status/1272778570801258496)); I look and these and I’m straight up like “I didn’t write that; someone better wrote that.” [ Here’s Felix with flowers in his hair](https://twitter.com/rrinahArts/status/1275520415717380096), just as we’re ending Garland Moon, so that’s nice. [ Here’s one from chapter 16 ](https://twitter.com/Tamago18445264/status/1274078946548686848) where Annette is so dang pretty I could cry. Anyways! Ridiculously talented people; give them a follow and say nice things and stuff.
> 
> (If I missed you, it wasn’t a purposeful slight! Finals week was hard and my files are a mess. Send me a note and I’ll add you above.)
> 
> Anyway, more disasters await in the next update, I’m sure. Go check out the chapter 1 author’s note and please remember that ya girl always keeps her promises; I’m going to go watch Wacky Races and 2Fast2Furious to get a sense of proper pacing. I’ll see you all in a couple of weeks! Hugs and kisses.
> 
> [ Come say hi on twitter if you want!](https://twitter.com/Rose3Writes)


	19. Annette Casts a Spell or Two

Annette wished her skirt had less skirt. The carriage they were riding in wasn’t particularly roomy for three people, and her father inadvertently pressed her up against the side of the carriage. This in and of itself wouldn’t have been a problem – she was hardly traveling for comfort at this point – if Felix had been able to keep the carriage on the center of the road, but it careened wildly back and forth, and Annette had to duck to keep more than one pleasant shrubbery or low-hanging tree branch from smacking her in the face. They’d spent so long on her hair that morning, too.

“I thought you said you knew how to drive this thing!” she yelled to Felix, leaning forward so he could hear her over the wind and nearly tipping over. Her father grabbed her arm a little more anxiously than she thought was strictly necessary.

“I did! I do!” Felix yelled back, taking his eyes off the road and nearly steering them into yet another thicket. The horses were galloping at top speed, which couldn’t possibly have been the intention when the carriage was designed. “I got us through the castle gates, didn’t I? Didn’t hit one in-law, either!”

He was interrupted by a bump in the road so violent that Annette nearly toppled out of the carriage entirely and Fantine fell awkwardly into Gustave’s lap.

Annette had to give credit where credit was due, Felix _hadn’t_ hit a single relative as he clumsily steered the carriage out of the courtyard and through the gates before coaxing the two horses into a full gallop. And there had certainly been enough chaos to navigate, in the moment. Annette had pulled her mother into the carriage with one hand and pushed her father in after her mother as the wheels began to turn, and then hoisted herself in after both of them just as the bulk of the guests began to realize what was happening. And by then, the carriage was already on its way, with one less coachman and two extra Dominics.

Annette had a pretty decent view of the ensuing pandemonium as she collapsed backwards on the seat next to her father, pulling herself up to her knees to peer over the back of the carriage. They hadn’t bothered to pull the top up, as it was ostensibly going to be an easy pace from here to Fraldarius, so it was easy for Annette to rest her hands on the back of the carriage and look over the crowd as the carriage began to roll away. She saw her uncle, clearly the first to realize what was happening, trying to push through a group of relatives to get to them before they gained too much momentum. He gently tried to set Great Aunt Mildred out of his way as she repeatedly stepped in front of him, but her insistent questioning was lost to the general shouting and surprise. Annette turned and saw the guard rolling onto his stomach, pushing himself up to look at the carriage that he was supposed to be driving speeding away. Annette gave him a nervous wave goodbye, and to her surprise, he returned it, a solemn salute that clashed with the amused, almost devious smile she only had a brief chance to see cross his face before she whipped around to see the rest of the crowd. She saw Cornelia’s soldiers running – not towards the carriage, which was quickly slipping out of their reach, but towards the stables, where their weapons and horses were kept, ready to ride at a moment’s notice. Cornelia stood still amidst the storm, but when Annette looked at her, she fixed her with a gaze that was pure hatred unmasked. A gaze that said Annette had messed up and would pay. A gaze that said she could never escape.

Annette waved goodbye to her, too, and half of her family burst into cheers at the gesture, thinking it was for them.

She watched the guards and the soldiers and her family and her captors disappear from view as Felix steered the cart out of the castle gates and onto the muddy road. She looked up and saw Castle Dominic, her home, her prison, her childhood, growing smaller and less imposing as they sped away from it. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to cry. She wanted to tell it goodbye and thank you and that she never hoped to see it again.

That was when the first tree branch smacked her on the back of the head, and after that Annette settled onto the carriage seat like a proper Duchess, albeit one who was squished to the side of the carriage her two parents, who were squished by each other, in a family reunion that was equal parts emotionally and physically uncomfortable.

“This can’t have been your first plan,” Gustave said to her, raising his voice over the sound of the wind rushing by. Annette could already feel her carefully pinned hair starting to come loose at the edges.

“Oh no, it wasn’t!” Annette said brightly. “My first plan involved a _lot_ more fire. But then Felix showed up and it just kind of . . . happened.”

“How does a month long espionage mission behind enemy lines ‘just kind of happen’?” Gustave said. “A surprise attack, a solid battalion or two, even a scouting mission – there’s no way this was the easiest solution.”

“That’s what I’ve been _saying_!” Felix shouted over his shoulder. He turned around to look at Annette’s father. “Two battalions and my sword and I would’ve had Annette out of here in three days, _tops_. Please mention that to your –”

The carriage shook wildly as the right front wheel missed the road and veered into the grass. Felix whipped back around and nudged the horses accordingly as Annette and her parents flailed wildly in the back.

“Eyes on the road, Felix dear!” Annette sang out with forced cheerfulness. “And don’t worry about all that, Father, this plan worked just fine, didn’t it?”

“You just – you just kidnapped your mother in front of our entire family!” Gustave said, gesturing wildly to Fantine, who ducked slightly to avoid his hand hitting her face, and then quickly readjusted so his arm settled around her shoulder. Annette was grateful, as the arrangement gave her maybe half an inch more space. But her father wasn’t done. “I can’t even tell if you two _are_ actually married, legally, right now. What am I supposed to tell your Aunt Mildred if she asks about that boy?”

“Now, now, Gustave dear, don’t worry about the family,” Annette’s mother said soothingly, patting his leg. “They’ve got to be over the moon – they haven’t seen such excitement since that one cousin of yours, Greta whosit, accidentally married the wrong identical twin.”

“No, Fantine dear, she _purposefully_ married the wrong identical twin,” Gustave corrected, turning away from Annette. “That was the whole scandal.”

“What a fun summer that was,” Fantine said with a smile.

“ _My point is_ ,” Annette cut in, leaning forward so both her father and mother could hear her. “We escaped and we’re going back to Fraldarius and no one is getting executed in Fhirdiad. That’s a very good point and I think we should all focus on that, don’t you think? Overall things are going quite well.”

The arrow flew over her ducked head and lodged itself in a tree, which they sped by before Annette even had a chance to properly scream.

“Sothis,” Annette muttered to herself, ignoring sharp objections from both her parents as she straightened up and twisted around, looking over the back of the carriage once more. Three men on horseback chased after them, two soldiers she recognized from her uncle’s battalions, and a bowman who must have traveled with Cornelia. He was already reaching for another arrow – Cornelia was evidently much less interested in taking them back alive.

Annette cast her first wind spell almost without thinking. It hit the bow knight squarely in the chest and he reeled backwards, momentarily knocked off balance. Annette smiled to herself. Two months without practice didn’t make as much of a difference as she had feared.

“Aim for the bows and arrows first, Annette,” her mother called, leaning over to be heard over the increasing calamity. “Your father can punch the others if they get too close.”

“I _know_ , Mother,” Annette said.

“They’re on horseback, Fantine, I’m not going to –”

Annette knew the second spell she fired off would knock the bowman off his horse even before it hit him. She could feel the extra surge of power at her fingertips, the wild energy that told her she’d tapped into something extraordinary. The wind seemed to hit the knight from three separate directions, and he didn’t move when he fell. The caravan moved on without him.

She refocused on the remaining two knights, who were clearly chasing after them on orders from her uncle. They rode in formation, one raising his lance and preparing to charge and the other with a sword drawn. Annette hesitated for a fraction of a second before deciding on the lancer, which might have been why her ultimate spell split the difference, missing his shoulder by at least a foot and rushing between the two of them. It bought them a modicum of time as the paladins slowed in response to the magic whipping by their heads, but little else. Annette frowned and realigned her shot, her fancy bell sleeves flapping wildly and distractingly every time she lifted her hands.

“Don’t do anything too lethal, Annette dearest,” her mother yelled to her, breaking her out of her concentration. “They serve House Dominic; maybe aim for an arm of something.”

Annette grimaced. Dulled magic and missed bullseyes were not her strong suit – why practice something if the end result wasn’t going to be perfect? – and this wasn’t a friendly magic tournament. She doubted the paladin was playing by the same rules of genteel cooperation that her mother seemed so keen to encourage.

Still, she did want to come back to Dominic someday, so her mother might have a point.

Annette narrowed her eyes and tried to reimagine her ideal shot at the shoulder instead of the heart. If she could just knock him off balance, eventually it wouldn’t be worth continuing the chase – maybe. At this point in her studies she didn’t need an incantation to execute a perfect wind spell, but her lips moved silently anyway as she swung her arms in a small circle that ended with a wild thrust forward at her wrists. Wind magic flew wildly towards the knight, the green light so bright it was practically blinding if you could track it long enough for your eyes to focus.

The magic barely glanced off the knight’s shoulder. Annette had misjudged both power and aim. He raised his lance and locked eyes with her, and she knew the telltale signs of a paladin about to enter a charge.

The arrow that hit the paladin was so swift it almost seemed instantaneous, as if it grew out of his armor rather than sinking into it. In a strange coincidence, it landed in the exact spot that Annette had aimed her spell. Her theoretical calculations were correct even if her spell had missed its mark – the knight tumbled from his horse, hitting the ground with a loud thud, and the horse bolted into the woods, leaving one knight remaining in the chase.

Annette whipped her head to follow the trajectory of the arrow. The bow knight was charging towards them at full gallop, so far away that Annette could scarcely believe he made the shot, unless he was obnoxiously and unfairly talented. It was hard to make out features, but she’d recognize that dramatic black armor and red hair – and that undeserved talent – anywhere at this point.

“Is that an Imperial rider?” her mother asked, spotting him at the same time that Annette did. “He’s not wearing the colors of Dominic.”

“No,” her father said with a sigh, his voice both relieved and deeply, deeply tired. “That’s the armor of Gautier.”

Annette waved at Sylvain so wildly she almost lost her balance, giving a delighted laugh as he raised his lance in greeting back at her. His bow was already strapped to his back once more – he’d become a better shot since she last saw him, but she could vaguely remember him saying that he’d heard that “ladies love a man who can shoot,” which was in line with Sylvain’s usual prefaces before he developed some unholy level of skill at a task he’d previously claimed no interest in. He was the most frustrating person Annette had ever met and she’d never been happier to see anyone in her whole life.

The clatter of horse hooves brought Annette back to the immediate moment, and she looked up to realize that the remaining horseman was charging at them, his sword drawn. Annette gave something between a battlecry and a scream as she fired off a shot of wind magic, but he swerved to avoid her last-minute attack. The swerve sent him around the far side of the carriage, where her mother sat.

The swordsman struck out clumsily, at a bad angle to really make a proper hit. Annette’s mother gave a small shriek and threw herself forward as the sword swung above her head. She collapsed to the floor of the carriage and Annette angrily flung another wind spell, which made more solid contact with the knight’s sword arm. He pitched to the side, absorbing the impact, but regrettably remained on his horse, riding beside the carriage.

Her father dropped his arms from the back of the carriage, and Annette realized now that he had been surprisingly effective at holding both her and her mother in place, and got to his feet, barely balancing as the carriage rocked back and forth wildly. With mumbled words that were a prayer or a curse or just another complaint, he lunged forward, punching the knight squarely across the jaw.

“The lady was unarmed, you swine,” he shouted as the knight reeled from the blow.

The punch was too shaky and tenuous to do much lasting damage – for all her cleverness, this hadn’t been Fantine’s _best_ suggestion – but Annette’s final cast of Cutting Gale did the trick, rushing past her father so quickly she briefly saw singe marks across his coat and slamming directly into the offending knight. He tumbled backwards, losing control of his horse entirely, and both horse and rider fell to the ground as the carriage sped away.

Annette gave another loud cheer, and her father bent down to gingerly help her mother off the floor of the carriage. Her victory cry was short lived, however, as the wheels of the carriage hit another bump in the road. Fantine lurched to the side, knocking into Gustave, who stumbled forward and sunk to the floor next to her. Annette, meanwhile, was jolted backwards, and her fingers grasped empty air as her back hit the edge of the carriage and she tumbled towards the edge of the carriage.

A pair of hands pressed into her shoulder blades and pushed her back upright, and one of those same hands pushed down on her shoulder until she fell into the seat once more, shaking.

“Give me this, at least – you can’t fault my timing,” Sylvain said, absolutely no seriousness in his voice. Annette looked over to him, speechless, and she would have given him a hug except that he was riding a horse alongside a speeding coach, and she was in the aforementioned speeding coach. He gave her a lopsided grin. “You don’t want to spend your wedding night with a bunch of broken bones, do you? You’re welcome – although I guess it’s Felix who should be thanking me, right?” He winked and Annette instantly forgot why she had been happy to see him.

“A little busy right now, Sylvain, can we do this later?” Felix snapped over his shoulder, not bothering to fully look behind him this time, which was an improvement.

“Don’t mind me, buddy, just saving your beautiful wife from certain doom!” Sylvain yelled back cheerfully. “I may not have gotten a ceremony invitation but I believe this still puts me in best man territory.”

“Where’s Ingrid?” Felix yelled back, as unimpressed as always.

Sylvain cast a glance over his shoulder quickly, suddenly more serious. “That’s a great question, where _is_ Ingrid?” he muttered. He looked back and addressed Annette, not Felix. “How many people are chasing you? I was waiting for the carriage to come by but she left from the castle, so she probably has a better bird’s eye view of the situation.”

“I have no idea,” Annette said, still breathless. She could feel her parents settling back into the seat beside her, although they remained silent and listening to the conversation, which was a new phenomenon. “It’s my uncle’s troops and also Cornelia’s.”

“She’s probably trying to slow them down,” Sylvain reasoned. “She’s good at that, and she’ll stay out of their range, unless – do any of them have bows?”

Annette shrugged. “Probably? They’re a standard cavalry battalion plus some elite mercenaries; they probably have every –”

“Yeah, I’m gonna go help her,” Sylvain interrupted, pulling his horse back and swinging around back towards the road behind him. “Try to stay inside the carriage until I get back!” he yelled over his shoulder, clattering down the road towards enemy troops.

“He seems like a nice boy,” Annette’s mother said pleasantly as Sylvain rode away. Felix, Annette, and Gustave all made noncommittal noises with varying degrees of diplomacy in response.

Annette shifted in her seat so she could look over the back of the carriage again, pulling herself to her knees. Her father awkwardly grabbed at a handful of her skirt. It probably wouldn’t be particularly helpful if she fell, but she was too distracted by the scene behind her to argue with him.

The next line of paladins had come into view, clearly moving at a much faster pace than a carriage with four people, Felix’s reckless driving notwithstanding. But their progress was slowed by a darting pegasus knight who had a habit of swooping in just long enough to knock them off their balance before disappearing into the treeline once more. Ingrid called this strategy “tactically located ambush maneuvers.” Sylvain and Felix just referred to it as “fucking with the enemy.” Either way, Ingrid was _extremely_ good at it.

Sylvain, as it turned out, was the perfect complement to Ingrid’s carefully planned lance jabs. Swooping in and around the line of paladins, he could easily deflect their attacks, waiting for an opening to bring his own lance crashing against them. Ingrid gave him such an opening – again, and again, and again.

Annette wondered if Sylvain had gotten around to proposing to Ingrid while she’d been gone, or if he just followed after her hopelessly, as he’d been resolutely doing for the last five months. As Ingrid drew another hapless knight’s attention towards her and Sylvain easily swatted him to the ground, Annette figured it didn’t really matter, at the moment.

If Ingrid’s plan was to “slow them down,” as Sylvain suggested, she was certainly succeeding, as the distance between them increased until Annette could only make out vague shapes rather than combat details. But even from the distance, she realized the figure riding into view, heading straight towards Sylvain with his lance drawn outward, was of a different caliber than the cavaliers that came before him. Even if his ostentatious armor didn’t give him away, Fantine’s gasp and the way Gustave moved his hand more protectively around her would have made it easy to figure out.

She’d never seen her uncle in battle, not even in tournaments, as he usually oversaw things as a master of ceremonies rather than fighting himself. But she’d heard her whole life that he was a distinguished general in his youth, though retired now, and that all of western Faerghus was aware of his battle prowess and combat skills. She saw it now. She recoiled in sympathetic pain on Sylvain’s behalf when her uncle made the first strike, lance clattering against armor even if it didn’t fully unseat him. Sylvain drew his horse back, and Annette cursed herself for never applying herself at distance healing, instead being so foolish, so giddy, at the prospect that Mercedes would always be there to cover that for her. Ingrid swooped in, her weapon barely glancing off his armor, and he turned just as she backed off. She was buying Sylvain time to recover from the blow, flying out of reach of his lance as he swung his horse around to face her.

Except, Annette thought, as he drew his arm back, he wasn’t acting like she was out of reach, not the way he held his weapon. Annette was too far away to see it clearly, but not too far away to realize –

“Ingrid,” Annette screamed at the top of her lungs, leaning over the back of the carriage as her father grabbed at her frantically to steady her. “It’s a javeli –”

The javelin arced through the air and made sickening contact against Ingrid’s side. She had already taken to the skies, aiming for as much height as possible, and such a hit sent her into a downward spiral, too weak from the hit and the shock to control her spooked pegasus beyond urging it into the woods lining the side path. She disappeared behind the treeline. Gérald was already reaching for the more permanent lance strapped to his back. It gleamed silver in the setting sun.

Even from a distance, Annette could hear Sylvain’s panicked, horrified cry as he urged his horse towards the spot where Ingrid fell. Gérald let him pass, and Annette fleetingly thought this was a brief moment of kindness, but as she looked back to him and saw him point his lance towards the carriage, she realized it was more likely hyperfixation. Annette would never know what his expression was, or indeed, which Dominic he was looking at as he charged.

She just knew that he charged.

Annette drew her wind magic to her fingertips, an viridescent sphere of energy increasing in size as he drew closer, but she held back from casting. Maybe she would regret it for the rest of her life, maybe she was as foolish and naïve two months on as she had been when she’d started this journey, but he was her _uncle_ – she couldn’t imagine him possibly – possibly –

“Annette! Fantine!” he called as he rode within earshot, his shout interrupting her horrifying train of thought. “Put down your weapons and stay your horses. The Dukedom will be merciful if I intervene on your behalf, I have no doubt.”

“I’m sorry, Gérald, dear,” Fantine called, turning in her seat so she was peering over the edge of the carriage, inadvertently leaning further into Gustave, who leaned away slightly into Annette. Annette frowned and elbowed him back – she needed wiggle room if she was going to cast properly. Fantine appeared not to notice any of this. “I don’t have any weapons, as you can see!” she called out, her voice rising above the noise of carriage wheels and horse hooves. “And I’m not driving this thing! I couldn’t come home with you even if I wanted to, I’m _quite_ helpless!”

“Uncle!” Annette bellowed, trying to sound as authoritative as possible. “Put down your lance and return home. I do not wish to harm you.”

“Maybe pretend to fall off your horse, Gérald!” Fantine suggested encouragingly. “Can’t chase us if you break your leg! No one will blame you.”

“If you come any closer I will be forced to attack,” Annette added, flaring the wind at her fingertips for dramatic effect.

Annette couldn't see her uncle roll his eyes through his helmet, but everything about his body language suggested that’s what he was doing. He lowered his lance once more and charged at them. Annette let fly her wind spell and it glanced off his shoulder, sparks flying upon impact. Gérald grunted at the hit, but it didn’t slow him down – partially because he was not headed directly for the carriage, as Annette suspected, but instead curved around the side, passing Annette and pulled up beside Felix.

Felix snapped his head to the side as the horse came up behind him. “Aw, Seiros,” he swore under his breath as he ducked the lance attack, the silvery gleam catching on the rays of the setting sun as the weapon flew over his head. He kicked out desperately, his boot clumsily connecting with Gérald’s leg as he fumbled for his sword while trying to hold the horses’ reins with one hand. A kick to solid armor did little to dissuade Gérald, but the Cutting Gale Annette slammed into him certainly set him off balance more – though not enough to slow him down, Annette lamented, her wrists aching and her heart beating unsteadily. She screamed, and the wind buried whether it was a warning or a confession or a prayer or Felix’s name or wordless fear, and Annette didn’t know herself. Gérald ignored both the attack and the scream, however. He didn’t even look behind him as he raised his lance again.

Which was probably why he didn’t see the dark magic blast aimed directly at his head until it slammed into him, blackish purple and hissing slightly, warping around his body before disintegrating in a way that seemed to sink into his armor rather than disappearing into the air.

The horse reared, and Gérald barely held on as the carriage swooped past him again. His lance hung loosely at his side and with his other hand he seemed to be clawing at his very skin.

“Dear Gérald; I hope he doesn’t take it personally,” Fantine said. Annette turned back and she was standing in the carriage, primly brushing at the backs of her gloved hands. “But I won’t have my daughter made a widow before she can even get a proper annulment – er, that is, if an annulment is what you want, Annette darling.”

“He’ll attack again,” Gustave said. He looked up at Fantine, one arm firmly around her waist and the other still clutching Annette’s wedding train. As the carriage hit yet another bump in the road, Annette was grateful. “You didn’t hit to kill,” he said gravely, and Annette was about to snap that he had no room to talk since he had done _nothing_ useful, but her mother surprised her by smiling down at him.

“You noticed!” she said, her voice tinged with glee. “Well, I don’t think he was really doing a very good job of hitting our dear Felix, in my defense – or is it his defense?”

“No, he wasn’t,” Gustave muttered, casting a glance at Felix, who was trying unsuccessfully to hold onto the reins in one hand and his sword in the other. “And that should’ve been an easy hit.”

“Worry about that later,” Annette snapped. “He’s charging again.”

Annette’s brain felt scrambled, working too fast, and she tried to recall her incantations and draw on her magic while pushing away mental images of Felix hit, Felix falling, Felix lost and gone and leaving her alone. Her fingers sparked, one, twice, and she shook her head, trying to concentrate enough to pull the wind out of its natural order to coalesce around her hands.

Hoofbeats drew her to the present faster than any theoretical grounding was able to. She looked up and saw her uncle in front of her, his lance raised, and she could see a wild panic in his eyes that might have mirrored her own. Annette found the gaps in the universe that she had been searching for blindly, pulled them towards her, and flung her wrists out with an incantation warped into a battlecry, a wild storm of magic crashing into her uncle just as he began his downward sweep of the lance towards her.

Several things happened at once, just then:

Annette's father grabbed her by both shoulders and pulled her back, both of them falling backwards towards the floor of the carriage.

The lance swung wide, and down too far, cutting a gash across Annette’s dress but leaving her unharmed.

Felix screamed, behind her, matching her prayer or matching her pleas, and the carriage veered wildly from his lack of attention.

The lance’s swing struck underneath the carriage instead of against Annette, knocking violently into the trunk stored beneath the seats, sending it flying into the road.

And above her, as Annette fell back, her arms flailing, her eyes skyward, she recognized the telltale spines of blackened, elongating, vicious spikes of tangible entropy forming above the carriage, centering on Gérald.

For a half a breath as all these things converged, the world seemed to freeze, to go silent, as if nothing was moving at all. And then the spikes descended.

Annette had read about Dark Spikes in countless theoretical books, many during her academy days when she furiously quizzed Lysithea von Ordelia for upcoming exams. But it had always seemed largely theoretical in her mind. As the spikes crashing into her uncle, relentless and inescapable, Annette realized why paladins and cavaliers feared it. The horse, panicked, had nowhere to run as it’s hoofs repeatedly crashed into the spikes coming up from the ground, and it finally gave a buck and whinny, throwing Gérald from its back before darting into the woods.

Gérald pulled himself up into a seated position and leaned against Annette’s now-destroyed trunk, breathing heavily. It had broken open upon impact with the ground, and the remnants of her wind spell had blown the letters she had carefully packed into the air, high above the fighting. Annette pushed off her father and leapt towards the back of the carriage once more, clutching for one of them, any of them, but they had already gone too far. The letters fell down around Gérald, a caricature of snow in the early summer evening, and he didn’t move to catch them as he grew smaller and smaller before disappearing entirely.

Annette’s mother clambered over the bench to reach her before Annette fully knew what was happening, and Annette was once more abruptly snapped back into the present moment, but this time by her mother’s hands brushing against her hair and prodding at her arms and turning her shoulders inward to look her up and down, like Annette was a child undergoing inspection after returning home from a playdate.

“My girl, my darling girl, did he hit you?” Fantine asked, her voice shaking, tugging at Annette’s arms and running her hands down the side of her wedding dress, checking for scrapes and bruises and life threatening lance wounds. “You’re alright – you’re alright. I’m so sorry, Annette, I let him get so close.” She pulled at the outer layer of the front of Annette’s dress, a floaty chiffon that the lance had sliced through like air. It hung in threads, cascading down the front of Annette’s dress to create additional, jagged layers, and Fantine pulled at the shredded fabric desperately, her face crumpling.

“Your daughter’s one of the strongest generals in the Kingdom army, Fantine,” Gustave said gravely, pushing himself off the floor and half-crawling back towards the bench with less dignity than he might have preferred. “You needn’t fret over her; she’s all in one piece, as you can see.”

“No thanks to that no-good brother of yours!” Fantine snapped, turning the full force of her wrath towards the entirety of the Dominic fraternal line. “He tried to stab her with a lance!”

“Well, he didn’t do a very good job,” was the best defense Gustave was able to supply. He sat back on his knees, giving up on trying to find space on the bench amidst Fantine’s sprawling worry and Annette’s sprawling skirts. He tilted his head as he looked up at his wife. “Dulled spikes, I noticed,” he mused, almost to himself. “Or at least – you’ve done sharper.”

Fantine flushed a deep shade of red, possibly spurred more by her present anger than any embarrassment. “It still got the job done,” she said haughtily. She busied herself fixing Annette’s hair and dress, which was a continuous job given how the wind was constantly blowing things out of place. “I want to hear him apologize to Annette before I turn _too_ lethal.”

“Cornelia might be lethal even if you aren’t, if he fails,” Gustave muttered darkly.

“Well,” Fantine said pragmatically. “That’s not really my concern.”

“Do you think that was the last of them?” Annette asked, partially to veer from such a grim subject, partially to have an excuse to wave away her mother’s fussing and turn to look over the back of the carriage again. “If Uncle Gérald was in charge, perhaps they’ll stop the chase to tend to him?”

“Don’t bet on it,” Felix called over his shoulder from the opposite side of the carriage. “Cornelia had half a dozen lackeys with her. They’ll be pushing after us, even if Dominic stands down.”

“Eyes on the road, Felix!” Annette said, not looking back at him, beyond relieved to hear his decidedly-alive voice.

“He’s right, though,” Annette’s mother murmured, grasping Annette’s arm a little too tightly. “Here they come.”

The horses were still on the horizon, but Annette’s blood chilled as she saw them. The riders wore black armor, which matched their mounts, and the only color she could make out was the maroon of their saddles and reins and the silver glint of their weapons. They loomed larger than her uncle’s men had, and rode in closer formation. Dominic’s knights were trained to scout, guard, to defend. Cornelia’s men were trained to kill.

“Do you still have that sword, boy?” Gustave asked, looking back towards Felix. “I’d be appreciative of a weapon.”

“Give me a second,” Felix shouted over his shoulder, trying once more to grip the reins with one hand, fumbling at his side for his sword. “Or I have a bow you could use in my trunk,” he added. “It's strapped to the top, inside the lid.”

“Hm . . . a distance advantage would be ideal,” Gustave murmured. He pulled himself up to kneel on the carriage bench and peered over the side, looking down to where the luggage was stored.

Fantine smacked him, even as she moved over to allow him more space. “Don't be ridiculous, Gustave, we’re in a speeding carriage,” she said sharply. “If you want to be useful, hold onto Annette while she’s casting spells – I don’t much care for these roads.”

As if to prove her point, the carriage lurched to the left and then immediately to the right, as if Felix had made it his personal mission to find every hole and ravine along the road and personally introduce the wagon wheels to them. Annette fell into her parents who fell into each other, but she counted her blessings that no one fell out of the carriage, probably because they all had pretty low centers of gravity to begin with. Still, if she was going to aim correctly, she would need to stand.

Annette pulled herself to her feet and balanced on the bench, her shoes wobbling, but no worse than they had when she’d tried to walk down the aisle earlier that afternoon. Her father wrapped an arm tightly around her knees, and she felt a strange wave of memory wash over her, as if he was about to lift her onto his shoulders when she was small. It felt safe for a moment, and then they hit another bump and she lurched forward and nothing felt like it would be safe ever again. But he held fast and her feet stayed planted, and with a quick smile around to the carriage Annette flexed her fingers and focused on the battlefield.

There were four of them, riding in tight formation, and Annette could make out their weapons now, a wide variety of the most expensive weapons available. Annette closed her eyes for a moment and took a breath, then refocused on the rider furthest to her left and flung her first spell outwards.

Reason magic was well named, for Annette. It made sense; it was inevitable. It was like writing a song, in a way – there were a million paths you could start down, and when you started, it seemed like there were a million ways you could go. But there was ultimately a logic to it that guided you once you started. Lysithea had once described wind spells as exploiting an anomaly in the universe, but Annette thought of it in more friendly terms. Yes, anima manipulation began with a distortion of the natural world. But after that starting point, it had always felt more to her like leading someone home, like finding balance and restoration in a chaos that you could control. Like moving through dissonant notes to find the unavoidable ending of your song.

She didn’t think any of this as she tore wind from stillness and pushed it outward, to cut, to tear, to destroy. She just thought of casting. Again. And again. And again.

Annette’s spells made brutal contact with the paladin on the left, knocking him backwards in the first hit and sending him flying in the follow-ups. Annette’s attack style had always been death by a thousand cuts. By her fourth spell, the wind was whipping against the riders so thoroughly that she could see their careful formation starting to break as one lagged behind and another lurched too far to the side. It wasn’t until Annette’s fifth spell that she noticed the spikes, however.

She understood, suddenly, what her father had meant by “dulled spiked” referring to the previous iteration of the spell. They seemed to drift slowly, almost lazily, as they formed out of thin air and surrounded the riders. But they were sharper, like daggers, and when they fell upon the riders, pointed ends facing downward, they pierced rather than hit, as precise and sharp as the needles of her mother’s embroidery.

As the second rider fell, spikes crashing into him from every direction, Annette looked over. Her mother stood on the bench beside her, one foot braced against the back of the carriage for balance. Her father had a hand looped around her waist, which set him quite lopsided but did seem to afford Fantine more freedom of motion. Annette stared wordlessly as her mother swung her arms back in a graceful swirl, calling energy out of the sky with a motion that was almost coaxing in its gracefulness. The final push outward as the spikes descended was sudden and violent in contrast, and Annette’s next cast of Cutting Gale was perhaps not needed as the second round of spikes crashed into the paladin with vicious accuracy.

“Easy, Fantine,” Gustave warned, and his voice sounded softer, or further away, than Annette realized. She glanced over to see her mother sink against him, bracing her arm against his shoulder as she ran her other hand through her hair, pushing her bangs from where they stuck to her forehead.

“I’m fine, Gustave, just a little – well, maybe a simpler spell for this last one,” she said brightly, her giant gasps for air contradicting her cheerful-if-shaky tone.

Annette grimaced. The inner workings of magic exhaustion were critically understudied, but she knew a combination of practice, spell choice, and ability were all caught up together – and any mage that pushed themselves too hard would suffer the consequences. She sometimes felt like she could cast forever, pure adrenaline pushing her forward and pure magical impulse holding her aloft. But even with her stable, practical wind spells, Annette was feeling the pulls of exhaustion at the corner of her mind. And her mother was using volatile and unstable spells. And she didn’t have a crest.

“Don’t worry, mother, I’ve got this one,” Annette said, interrupting whatever her father was murmuring to her mother as she leaned against him. Annete spoke with more optimism than she felt, as she only had one or two chances at a clean shot before the rider was upon them and things got extremely messy.

Saggitae still pulled at her fingers with unfamiliar impatience, a spell she understood logically but had yet to feel instinctively. If anything, she had too much time to think about how to cast it, her concentration overly critical, overly precise, as she wove the necessary components of the spell together. But as the spell snapped into place at her fingertips, it felt _right_ , like a button meeting a button hook or a puzzle piece snapping into its match. And she had to admit, as she threw her hands out, pushing the energy forward, releasing it back into the world – for a moment she felt pretty damn powerful.

The beams of light eerily mirrored her mother’s own dark, pointed cylinders, light against dark, arrow against needle. They didn’t slam into the rider with the same designed destruction as a specifically anticavalry spell, but the knight still stumbled from the hit. Many of the arrows of light bounced off him and disappeared into the air around him, but the particularly powerful arrows seemed to rush through him before disappearing on the other side.

The rider regained control of his horse and he swiveled his position towards Annette. She had been optimistic when the spell hit him, but her heart sunk in her stomach as she saw him reach behind for a bow to momentarily replace his sword. It looked to be one of the bows designed for quick successions of shots – lightweight and easily managed, but built to pierce just as brutally, in the hands of a skilled enough archer. Annette felt for another spell, another gap in the natural world to pull at the ends of. She found the beginnings of her spell just as the rider notched his first arrow, and it was going to be a race for the first attack and Annette was terrified that she was going to lose.

The shadow overhead distracted her from her incantation, setting her cast back even further, but as Ingrid barreled into the bow knight, her armor streaked with blood and a wild battle cry ricocheting back towards the carriage, Annette realized it didn’t particularly matter. Ingrid looked in a bad way, and charging at a bow knight was nothing short of idiotic, but she had always been one to take a gamble if the payoff was worthwhile.

This payoff was worthwhile. Ingrid’s lance unseated the horseman with a brutal flourish at the end, and Annette’s cast of cutting gale slammed into his chest as Ingrid sent him flying. Ingrid swerved upwards, away from the rider, but she had no need to get out of his range – he wouldn’t be making any follow up shots. As she steered her pegasus towards the carriage, Annette saw a wild, triumphant grin spread across her face.

“Sorry, Annette!” she shouted down as she flew over the carriage. “Didn’t mean to take your shot!”

“Ingrid!” Annette yelled upwards, waving her hands enthusiastically, remnants of her spell casting harmless sparks around her head. “My hero!”

“Don’t encourage her,” Sylvain yelled, riding up from out of the side road to try to keep up with Ingrid’s flight path. “Took off before I even had a chance to tie off the bandages properly – _no_ sense of self-preservation, this one.”

“Don't be jealous that I’m faster than you, Sylvain,” Ingrid called, her pegasus now keeping pace with the front of the carriage, so that she rode alongside Felix.

“Jealous? I’m the one who has to patch you up!” Sylvain yelled back, riding past Annette with not so much as a cocky wink in her direction. So definitely _something_ had changed since she’d seen them last.

“Stop bickering,” Felix said, his voice barely carrying above the wind as he turned between his two friends on either side while still trying to keep his eyes on the road. “If you can - - - rendezvous point - - - healed up before we have - - - Fraldarious by nightfall.”

Annette could hardly make out his instructions, but they must have made sense to Ingrid and Sylvain, who charged forward at full speed, leaving the carriage, laden with people metal and at least one remaining trunk, to lumber after them. 

Annette collapsed in a heap on the bench beside her parents, no longer carrying that there wasn’t enough space and simply relieved for a chance to sit.

“Do you think . . . that was all of them?” she said, her breathing rather heavily. The weariness following casting a spell wasn’t like swinging an axe, or running, or other physical activities. It settled into your bones slowly, refusing to go away. Mercedes had once slept off a particularly vicious battle for seventeen hours straight, and still yawned through breakfast the next day. Annette wearily poked at the torn and ruined top layer of her wedding dress, feeling a strange sense of grief for it as it fluttered around her hands.

“No.” Her mother’s reply cut through her post-magic haze, and Annette sat up straighter, turning towards her voice. Fantine was pushing herself up as well, moving away from Gustave to look over the back of the carriage again. Gustave’s hands were clutched firmly together, he stared at the floor in silence.

“Really?” Annette asked. “It seems like any other riders would have caught up to us by now, and there’s no chance anyone on foot –”

“No,” Fantine repeated, and her voice sounded bleary and far away. She leveraged her hand against Gustave’s shoulder to hold herself upwards. “There’s one more. She wouldn’t let us go without chasing us herself. I’m sure she’s not far behind.”

Annette sucked in a breath, and leaned back against the carriage seat again, and clutched at her skirt so fiercely she could feel the delicate fabric rip even further. She’d known Cornelia for less than a month (which was frankly a month too long), but that was enough to know that her mother was absolutely, unmistakably correct.

It wasn’t a surprise, then, when she heard the carriage wheels behind them. It was simply an inevitability. 

Cornelia rode behind them on a carriage, smaller and lighter and faster, driven by only one horse and one horseman. It was a higher-set seat, and she loomed above them at the front of the carriage, seemingly unbothered by the bumps in the road or the shaky terrain. Annette pulled herself to her knees, and then to her feet once more, momentarily getting tangled in her dress but finding her footing faster than she would’ve thought possible. She glanced at her mother, mirroring her actions on the other side of the bench. Reaching a silent agreement, they cast their first spells in unison.

Dark purple and emerald green light intermingled in a streak across the sky, a rush of wind and the pull of decay crashing into each other and scarcely separating before they fell upon Cornelia, sending her hair flying out around her and sinking into her.

Cornelia flicked her wrists and the remaining magical energy dissipated around her. She gave a brief toss of her head and her curls settled back into place. She was still far away, but as she stretched out her hand towards the carriage, Annette knew she was smiling.

“I feel like that didn’t work very well,” Annette said, her voice squeaking more than she’d intended.

“Where’s an axe when you need one?” her mother agreed grimly.

Cornelia cast her first spell with more of a snap of her fingers than a flinging arm; the dark mass of hissing energy seemed to appear midair and gather form as it went along. Annette gave a yelp and ducked just in time to hear the miasma hissing over her head. Its misshapen tendrils pulled at the edges of her hair as it passed. The spell made contact with a nearby tree, and Annette whipped her head around to see a blacked, gooey hole that went straight through the tree, a tar-like substance oozing around the edges.

“Cornelia’s going to be very hard to deter with magic,” Annette’s mother said, speaking quickly, her previous weariness disappearing under a mask of determination. “We can try to wear her down, or outlast her. Even if she can resist the majority of magic attacks, she can’t last forever.”

“Fantine, neither can you,” Gustave said, his voice tinged with concern.

“I don’t have to last _forever_ , darling, I just have to last longer than – Annette, what are you doing?”

Annette let off the burst of a Cutting Gale before the words were fully out of her mother’s mouth. She had moved to the far edge of the carriage, practically hanging over it, with one foot planted on the bench and the other giving her more lateral leverage against the side of the carriage. The spell flew wide, arcing over the road, practically into the trees, before curving inward again and plummeting towards Cornelia’s coach. It was too low of a shot to hit Cornelia; she didn’t even attempt to move out of the way as she eyed it with a disdainful sneer. Instead, the spell crashed into the wheel beside her with a resounding crack.

The rider, to his credit, was skillful enough to keep the carriage on the road, even with a battered wheel. But the carriage veered wildly, to the left and then to the right and then back to center, and Cornelia was flung towards the back. Annette allowed herself a small, satisfied smile. Her mother allowed herself a victorious cackle of laughter.

“Brilliant, Annette, aim for the wheels,” she sang, far too cheerful for the situation. “I’d like to see her try to catch us on foot.”

Cornelia had, by this point, pulled herself back to her feet, and she peered over the edge of the carriage with a look of pure annoyance. She reached her hand out above the wheel, palm spread wide, and brought her fingers together, pulling her hand back slightly. The wheel seemed to right itself before Annette’s eyes, dark, sticky patches of magic clinging to the broken spokes and pulling them together temporarily.

“Can she - did she just do that?” Annette asked, her mouth dropping open. “I feel like she shouldn’t be able to do that.”

“No, no, this definitely could be worse,” Fantine said, as if that were soothing. “We can make this work. If she’s repairing her wagon, she’s not flinging spells at us. If you could just – keep doing that. I think I have a spell that might work.”

“Fantine, don’t,” Gustave started, and he faltered when she cast her eyes down at him, daring him to continue. “Don’t hurt yourself,” he landed on. His hands twitched impatiently; Annette regretted that she had no weapon to give him.

Fantine smiled at him for a moment, and it was too bright to be genuine. “Don’t worry, Gustave, I’ve gotten even better since you’ve seen me last,” she said, her voice matching the same overbrightness. She looked over at Annette and warmth crept back into the edges of her smile. “I’m going to need you to keep her attention on the wheel, Anentte dear, if you don’t mind,” she said, and Annette snapped her attention back to Cornelia’s carriage, which seemed to be getting closer. Cornelia had righted herself, standing at the center of the carriage one more, and she flicked two fingers outward, conjuring a magical blast that she sent hurtling towards the carriage once more.

This time, Annette wasn’t fast enough to duck out of the way, particularly with the rocking of the carriage and her own distracted conversation. The miasma spell crashed into her, hitting her directly in the shoulder, and her father barely caught her as she tumbled backwards. Annette gasped for air and scrambled mentally to remember the feeling of a counterspell, to offer a token of resistance to the sensation of decay that was sinking into her arms and chest. She found it, a faint memory of reversing the magic, and pushing against it, refusing to let the atrophy sink in too deeply. She heard her parents screaming her name somewhere in the periphery of her hearing, and she grabbed the edge of the wagon for balance. Her eyes were squeezed shut tightly, and she coaxed herself to find balance, literal and psychological and magical, until the world came back into focus and she heard another voice screaming, over and over, and realized it was her own.

“I’m fine, I’m _fine_ , I’m fine,” she yelled, waving her father off of her, her flailing arms somehow smacking against her mother’s hands, as well. She took another gasp of air, and stared up at their faces, worried and not believing her. “I’m _fine_. She added again, hoping it sounded confident. She cracked her knuckles and stared back at the carriage. “Let’s do this,” she said, and she cast Cutting Gale before they could respond.

She wasn’t actually fine, this was more or less a lie. She wasn’t going to die from a hit from a one basic spell, but her shoulder throbbed with every spell she cast, and when she glanced down at her arm she saw a trail of red welts poking out from underneath her billowing sleeves, curving around towards her elbow. But she pushed the pain out of the way, a problem for her future self, if she made it that far. Instead, she concentrated on casting spell after spell after spell after spell.

The rough dirt road became thick with the lingering scent of magic, as spells ricocheted off one another and into the ground and, occasionally, into their targets. Annette winced as a jumbled, disjointed cloud of dark energy cascaded into her mother, but Fantine shook her head, whether to warn her family away from her or clear her own mind, and fired off a returning thunder spell of her own. Another spell, faster and more powerful, clocked Annette in the ear as she dodged away from it, leaving what felt like a burn market against her earlobe. The twin beams of the spell, long corkscrews of dark magic bored into a nearby tree, splitting it neatly in half. Annette shuddered, glad it was only her ear that felt on fire in the moment.

Cornelia’s spells moved slowly, lumbering and unruly, but she cast them quickly. Even with two mages against her one, she was able to cast counterattacks as she repaired the damage to her carriage, which was rapidly becoming held together more by magical bindings than actual structural integrity. Annette had a clearest shot for the front left wheel, but she tried to vary her attacks to keep Cornelia moving, and she managed to hit the front right wheel, the side of the carriage, and at one point, even the beleaguered coachman, took the hit in stride, quite possibly a powerful soldier in his own right.

It was when she hit the floor of the carriage directly in front of Cornelia that the sorceress finally turned her attention to Annette more fully. Annette had expected her to repair it the same way – the hole was gaping enough that she was in danger of falling through if she took one wrong step. But Cornelia merely hopped over it lightly, ducking a fire spell from Fantine, and narrowed her eyes at Annette with utter disdain as she flicked two fingers outward again, sending a miasma spell that was too far wide, that had no chance of hitting Annette at all, that Annette wouldn’t even need to try to dodge, but that Annette had no way to prevent from hitting her own carriage wheels.

Annette heard the crack, although it was possibly more from contact than from the wheel fully breaking, as the carriage miraculously continued to roll forward. She nervously bent over the carriage to look. The back wheel was completely encircled in a pulsating purple light, which seemed to cling to the spokes and the outer wheel, unchanging as the wheel ground the light against the road with each rotation. At first, Annette wondered if the spell had failed somehow, but when the carriage lurched wildly to the side, she realized in horror that it had not. The spell was eating away at the wheel, slowly throwing it off balance until there would eventually be nothing left.

“She hit the wheel!” Annette yelled, frantically looking back at her mother, who looked over, surprised. Annette added, desperately, “Can you fix it? Is that a standard dark magic spell?”

“Not – not really, no!” Fantine yelled back. “The physical manipulation of the material world like that is – well, never mind. How much longer will the wheel last, do you think?”

“Ummm,” Annette said, looking at the wheel, which was starting to bend inward in a direction that wheels were definitely not supposed to go. The wagon lurched to the side again. “Not very long?” she ventured.

“Right then,” Fantine said, her mouth set in a grim line. “Time to end this, then.”

“Fantine –” Annette’s father started, but whatever warning or encouragement he was going to give was lost as Fantine raised her hand above her head and brought her fingers together to a single point.

The first change Annette noticed was the temperature, the way the air around her seemed to chill as if she had just stepped into a shadow. The shadow came second. It was a strange sensation, as there were no clouds in the sky, but the world suddenly became darker, and dimmer, not just around their carriage but as far as Annette could see. She glanced up towards the sun, briefly, and from the corner of her eye she could still see it shining, but sepia-toned, muted, still there but with a veil across it.

The strange, unnatural chill and darkness made the lone light easy to spot, even if the source hadn’t been scarcely a foot away from Annette. Annette looked over at her mother and almost jumped back in shock. Her mother was glowing; a soft, pale light in her arms and face and down through her shoulders. It wasn’t a warm glow; the chill that filled the air around them seemed to center around her spell. The glow was disappearing from her as she murmured the incantation of the spell, and a softly lit orb balanced on the fingertips of her right hand was growing in size, the light from her skin fading away and feeding into it. It wasn’t so bright as the sun; Annette could stare at the orb fully, and she did. It also didn’t have the swaying, swirling motion of Annette’s Reason magic. It was like condensed moonlight, soft and reflective and seemingly solid. Annette wondered if it would roll if her mother dropped it.

Her mother did not drop it. Instead it grew, steadily and ominously, until she brought up her other hand, balancing it against her fingertips although she didn’t seem to be holding it at all. The light grew larger, until it practically hurt to look at, but Annette could scarcely bring herself to look away. When she did look away, she saw Cornelia was similarly entranced, but with a look of utter fury across her features. In one hand, she was drawing out a magical attack of her own, but it was smaller, and growing more slowly, and Annette knew she wouldn’t have time to cast it properly.

Fantine’s arms were practically fully extended to hold onto the edges of her spell, and she narrowed her eyes in concentration. With a flick of her fingers, she sent the orb upward, and it floated when it should have sunk. Before it could get very far, she gave a matching flick of her wrist outward, pushing forward against a shadow with her full arm.

The sphere flung forward, moving through air the way a swimmer moves through water – slow, weightless, gliding. It looked almost peaceful, for a brief moment, until it crashed into the carriage with full force, completely enveloping Cornelia for a moment before exploding light into every direction, bright and blazing and suddenly not like the moon at all. It was as bright as the sun, and it brought warmth and light back into the entirety of the surrounding area, and Annette covered her eyes, trying to block out the sudden, inescapable flash that surrounded them all.

When she uncovered her eyes, the carriage lay in ruins, a pile of splintered wood and metal. The tar-like magic that had held the wheels and body of the carriage together seemed to be moving on its own accord, writhing to get away from the remnants of the light before it faded into the ground below. Cornelia lay in the center of the rubble, and Annette scarcely had time to hope before she saw her hand move. Cornelia had just begun to push herself up into a sitting position, when the carriage whipped around a corner once more and she disappeared out of sight. The last thing Annette was left with was the resolute, piercing glare she gave them as she locked her gaze on the back of the wagon. Cornelia didn’t need words to swear revenge.

Annette sunk back into the seat again. The sudden curve had more or less knocked Fantine back into her seat, as well, and she fell against Gustave, who once again looked utterly unsure about what to do with his hands.

“I don’t think that killed her,” she whispered, her eyes fluttering closed. Annette wanted to reach out and touch her and make sure that she was warm again, that the chill was gone, but she kept her hands in her lap.

“No,” Gustave, finally taking an arm and wrapping it around her, giving her more space to lean against him. “But she won’t be following us after that, I don’t think.”

“I wanted to kill her,” Fantine murmured. “I really did.”

“We’re all safe now, that’s what matters,” Gustave replied.

The carriage lurched wildly to the side, sending them all flying into each other again. Annette leaned over the edge of the carriage and looked down at the wheel. It had worn away to practically nothing on the outer circumference, the purplish light still clinging to it.

“I don’t think that was my driving,” Felix yelled, looking back for the first time since he’d sent Ingrid on her way. He looked a bit surprised as he glanced behind him. “Anyone still after us?” he asked, raising an eyebrow and then jerking his head back to the road as one of the front wheels hit what Annette assumed was a rather large rock in the roadway.

“Think that was the last of them,” Annette called back. “But this back wheel looks, um, very broken. Extremely broken, I would say. How much longer to Fraldarius?”

“Four hours, if we’re lucky?” Felix called over his shoulder.

“Okay, how far can we get in about, um,” Annette looked at the wheel again. It almost seemed cheerful, the way it was wobbling back and forth, shaking the carriage with every rotation. “Ten minutes?” she guessed.

There was a long pause, and then Felix finally looked back.

“I can probably make ten minutes work,” he said. “Nobody stand up, okay?”

As if to accentuate his point, the carriage gave another unsteady lurch, and Annette jostled against her family as Felix urged the horses just a bit faster.

It was probably less than ten minutes, all things considered. Annette didn’t have much of a sense of time, collapsed in a heap at the back of the carriage, her shoulder stinging and her dress ripped and her right foot falling asleep from the awkward way it was tucked under her. Everything seemed a little too spinny, although that might have been the actual motion of the carriage, which would have been on its last legs even with a competent driver, which Felix certainly was not. They all sat in silence, their breathing gradually returning to normal, no one in her family willing to make eye contact with anyone else. But it still didn’t feel like a full ten minutes had passed before Felix rounded a final corner, steered the carriage towards the side of the road, and brought the horses to a rather sudden halt.

The carriage crashed to a stop, the intrepid back wheel somehow holding on until the final moments, when it cracked and lurched through its last revolution. Out of the corner of her eye Annette could make out Felix untangling himself from the driver’s seat and running to her side of the carriage, but the world was reeling too much for her to understand what he was shouting to her. Annette could feel the entire carriage tilt to the side before settling haphazardly into the mud of the road. She grasped around – at the side of the carriage, at the bench, at herself – to confirm that she was, in fact, still alive. Then she gave a victorious shriek of laughter and catapulted to her feet, flinging herself over the side of the carriage to where Felix waited below.

If Felix had intended to gently help her climb out of the carriage, one hand extended expectantly and with more decorum than the world generally thought him capable of, he adapted to Annette’s jump quickly. He wrapped his arms around her waist as he spun her away from the carriage, and it did feel more like a spin than a simple step away – their first dance reclaimed from a reception that sorely needed one. Annette laughed again, relief and adrenaline rushing through her and making her lightheaded. She grasped at Felix for balance, fingers grabbing against his shoulders and the loose ends of his hair and the tassels on his uniform and goddess knew what else.

“We did it, we actually did it,” she cried, her voice catching somewhere between another peal of laughter and a sob. She leaned back, eyes darting down to Felix’s, and they were soft and amber and practically amused and she felt dizzy all over again. “I kind of can’t believe I’m alive?” she added with a shaky laugh.

From this close she could mark the change in Felix’s eyes as he shifted from celebration to concern, and he raised a hand to brush against her ear. She braced her hands against him for balance, although he seemed in no danger of dropping her. “You got hurt,” he said, frowning.

“Just like. . . twice,” Annette protested, leaning away from his hand, and missing it when he pulled away. “My shoulder hurts way worse, if I’m being honest.”

“Your shoulder?” Felix asked. “What’s wrong with – oh, goddess, Annette.”

“Shhh,” Annette said, leaning back towards him so he’d stopped running his eyes down her injured arm. He looked up at her in panic, and she offered a weak approximation of a smile. “We’re alive, right? That’s what matters. We did it.” She sighed, dropping her forehead until it rested against his. “I’m so tired, Felix,” she added. The adrenaline boost was rapidly becoming an energy crash, and she couldn't decide if she wanted Felix to hold her like that forever or to put her down instantly so she could lean against him, or a tree, or directly on the ground.

“All that magic, no doubt. After no conditioning for two months,” he said, his voice chastising even if his eyes were concerned. Annette pulled back and wrinkled her nose at him – what did he expect her to _do_ , steal a sword and hit up the practice grounds while under house arrest? But he grinned up at her before she could bicker with him. “How many did you take out, do you think?” he asked, still grinning.

Annette shrugged. “Half a dozen or so? Maybe more? You lose track after a while, you know.”

“That’s our Annette,” Felix said, and Annette blushed wildly at the compliment, suddenly embarrassed to make eye contact. Felix chuckled softly and moved to lower her to the ground – ground which, Annette suddenly remembered, was about two parts dust and rocks to three parts mud at the moment.

“Wait wait, no!” Annette said, drawing her knees up and wrapping her feet around Felix before he could set her down. “My dress – it’ll get all muddy! Hanna will kill me!”

Felix froze, utterly bewildered. “You’re never going to see her again,” he said.

“Don’t say that!” Annette said. “She’s the best seamstress I know; I can’t just mess up all her hard work.”

“What, do you want me to carry you all the way back to Fraldarius?” Felix asked. Annette glared down at him silently. “Okay, fine,” he sighed, stumbling back across the road, tangled up in Annette and her wedding dress, until he reached the side of the road. “Grass beats mud, right?” he asked, setting her down before she could answer.

Annette’s knees buckled as Felix stepped away from her, and she grabbed at his arm without thinking. “Anything’s better than mud,” she said as Felix readjusted his arm around her. She could feel her hands shaking from the fear and panic she’d suppressed in the heat of battle. “I guess it’s not like I’ll ever need to wear it again,” she said softly, looking down as the wet grass soaked into her hemline, the front of the skirt split into jagged halves at the top layer. “But it was my mother’s – I’d like to give it to my daughter someday.”

“Well, you know – best seamstress in Fódlan and all, Hanna will be able to fix a little dew,” Felix muttered, leaning towards her to follow her sightline to her shoes. “You can blame everything on me. She didn’t seem to like me very much, anyways.”

Annette giggled. “She really didn’t, huh? Hanna knows a villain when she sees one.”

She sagged against Felix, too tired to stand, too tired to be embarrassed. She could be embarrassed when she was done being surprised that she was alive. They leaned against each other in silence, surveying their surroundings quietly as the unbelievable reality of their success sunk in. Annette watched as her father gravely helped her mother out of the carriage, holding her hand and then her elbow and then her waist with a practiced form that Annette could vaguely remember from childhood. Her mother seemed less affected by the muddy roads than Annette, but held the same weariness in her shoulders, and walked with the same unsteady gait. Annette wondered if dark magic felt different once it was done, whether it took from you differently. Her father followed after her mother hesitantly, his arm stretched halfway towards her, and Annette tore her eyes away. The road curved ahead, around a bend and towards a fork that would undoubtedly lead them further west or east towards Fraldarius. The sun was low in the sky ahead of them, casting long shadows and catching the reds and golds of the world around them, and Annette realized that it wasn’t coincidental that this was where Felix had crashed the carriage to a halt. She recognized her surroundings.

“This is that same hillside we picnicked at, isn’t it?” she asked, shaking herself out of her daze and looking up at Felix. “The one where you – um – I guess proposed, if that’s what you want to call it?”

“Yeah, it is,” Felix said, looking at her for the briefest of glances before he looked back towards the broken-down carriage, his ears slightly pink. “I don’t know your territory very well; it was the only landmark I could think of.”

“Landmark?” Annette asked, slightly confused and suddenly very tired. It was going to be such a long ride back to Fraldarius, and if the horses were half as exhausted as she was –

Felix must have been thinking the same thing. He took a step towards the carriage, fingertips stretched absently to linger on Annette’s back as he moved away from her. “Do you think we need to untie the horses?” he asked, his eyes narrowing as he looked at them. “Your uncle will come for them, or send men for them, right? Someone will find them.”

“Find them?” Annette repeated, wrinkling her nose in confusion. “We’ll need them to get Fraldarius, won’t we?”

“After that ride? They’d never make it,” Felix said. “Or maybe they would, but it would be cruel to push them further, don’t you think?”

“You can’t actually carry me to Fraldarius, Felix,” Annette said, beginning to follow after after him but stopping at the mud she had worked so hard to avoid. “And I’m afraid I left my good walking shoes in my trunk, which I guess is scattered halfway across Dominic by now.”

“What? No, I got us horses,” Felix said. He turned back from the carriage to look over her shoulder, towards the hill behind them where Annette had spent the happiest afternoon of her entire wretched year. “I just need to figure out where – ah! There we go!”

“What are you talking about?” Annette asked. “You can’t have hid horses along the Dominic countryside – eep!” She let out a squeak as Felix grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her towards the hillside. He quickly caught her as she tilted to the side, thrown off balance by her shoes and the spin and the long, impossible day she’d just had.

“There you go, Annette,” Felix murmured just above her ear, pointing up to the hillside behind them. “You didn’t really think I’d be the only Blue Lion who’d come to get you, did you?”

Annette blinked up at the hill in surprise and shock and overwhelming happiness. A half-dozen silhouettes appeared on the horizon, walking over the hill, where they had been waiting on the other side. Armor gleaming, shadows long, bathed in the golden pre-twilight light – Annette would have thought she dreamed them if Felix hadn’t felt so warm and real and tangible behind her. Dimitri and his smallest, most trusted army descended the hill, weapons cast aside, arms outstretched, ready to welcome her home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No horses were harmed in the making of this chapter.
> 
> Well! This one took a bit longer, I guess, but here it is! It’s kind of hanging together by dental floss and chewing gum, but if I’m honest, there are a few moments in this chapter that I’ve had lurking around in the back of my mind since literally the start of writing this fic, so I’m glad to get them out of my brain and onto paper and into the world, so I never have to think about them again! They’re yours now! I don’t want ‘em.
> 
> I’m thinking it might be time for another mid-seasons break. Summer vacation and all that. I’ve got some other projects I want to work on, and guys, I still haven’t finished _Emma_. So go read some other things (I can recommend the first half of _Emma_ , if that helps, but also there’s like 500 fics in this tag) and when you think of me, think of me chilling on a beach drinking a piña colada and not writing at all. That’s categorically not what I’ll be doing, I cannot emphasize enough that I do not leave my house these days, but that’s how I would like you to think of me.
> 
> Look for updates starting up again end of August / beginning of September. I’ll miss you very much in the meantime!
> 
> [ You can follow me on twitter](https://twitter.com/Rose3Writes) if you’re worried about missing me, too. My opinions continue to be uniformly bad.
> 
> Hugs and kisses!


	20. Felix Manages a Household

Felix had not been a model child, on the whole. There was the time he had tried to keep frogs in a box under his bed but hadn’t put the lid on properly so they got out and hopped all over the castle. There was the time Glenn convinced him to sneak out after bedtime and drip ink over the banister so it dropped on the fancy hats and elaborate dresses of noble ladies at their parents’ Important Dinner Party. There was the time they tried to hide Sylvain in the garden topiaries so he wouldn’t have to go home, telling his Father he had already started the journey back and he could catch up to him on the road to Gautier if he hurried away now and didn’t ask any follow up questions. There was the time he and Ingrid sparred and he swung too hard and broke her nose and blood was everywhere and she was crying, not because her nose was broken but because she wasn't going to be allowed to spar if her mother saw her nose like this, so they tried to pretend her nose wasn’t broken as it grew almost comically large at the center of her face over the course of lunch that afternoon.

Matthew had caught the frogs, dragged him by the ear back to his room, coaxed Sylvain out of the gardens, found a healer for Ingrid and not said a word about it after sending her off to the infirmary. He’d ended each of these events by giving Felix a long, dissatisfied look. All those looks were nothing compared to the look of absolute disappointment he was giving Felix now.

“I’m telling you, Matthew, we can just put them in the soldiers barracks,” Felix said, rubbing his eyes to avoid ripping up the paper Matthew was holding, a complicated list of spare bedrooms and guest preferences. “That’s where we’re putting the rest of the army, when they get here from Galatea.”

Dimitri had only brought an elite force to Dominic. Ingrid and Sylvai, of course, but Mercedes and Dedue and Ashe as well. Thankfully, they had not needed the additional strength once they all made it to the rendezvous point, but Felix had been grateful for the small band of troops. This was mostly because of Annette’s wild scream of joy when Mercedes fully picked her up off the ground and spun her in a circle as they hugged. But more practically, it meant they had enough horses and guards for the trip to Fraldarius to be relatively safe. Tiring, but safe.

Still, even with a small traveling party it had taken hours to ride back to Fraldarius, and Matthew had been particularly thin-lipped when he realized he was not just finding accommodations for Annette’s additional personal guard, but for the majority of the nobility of Faerghus.

Matthew’s frown dipped even lower, now. “You want to put them in the soldiers barracks, your grace?” he asked flatly. “The future king of Faerghus and his most trusted retainers. The new Duchess of Fraldarius, and might I remind you that you’ve yet to introduce me to her Ladyship? The highest general in the Kingdom army and his wife, whom your own parents thought _extremely highly of_ , Your Grace. The future Margrave of Gautier – and unless I miss my mark, the future Margravine, as well.”

Felix looked away, blushing with annoyance from the third sentence onward. “They can . . . they’ll be fine in the soldiers quarters. They’re an army, for crying out loud,” he mumbled unconvincingly.

Matthew merely looked at him as if he was seven and had just released bees in the ballroom, and returned to consulting his chart of available guest rooms. “We’ll put Lady Fantine in the violet room, I think,” he muttered. “That was your mother’s favorite, for guests, and we can have it ready within the hour.”

Felix sighed. They’d been doing this for forty-five minutes, and Matthew hated all of his suggestions, but at this point it was better to agree than try to argue his way out of it. “I’m sure she’ll love it, Matthew,” he said, resigned. “I assume Sir Gust – Sir Gilbert will stay in his usual room?” They’d been unfortunate enough to host Gustave on and off after Fhirdiad fell. He’d pointedly ignored Felix’s suggestions that there were probably much more comfortable rooms in Dominic.

“Very sensible, your grace,” Matthew said pleasantly. “And I believe Lord Sylvain has already claimed his particular room, so I’ll make a note of that.

“You can probably put Ingrid in there with him if you need to save on space,” Felix muttered. Matthew returned this suggestion with a steely glare.

“I wasn’t aware of their wedding announcement; it must have happened quite recently,” Matthew replied with biting sarcasm. Felix rolled his eyes, but relented. It was getting close to midnight and he wanted to pick his battles.

“Give Ingrid whatever room she usually has, then,” he said. “And put Dedue close to Dimitri; he won’t get any sleep otherwise. I assume you have some specific King-room in mind for him.”

“Obviously,” said Matthew, making another half-dozen incomprehensible marks on the chart. He frowned at the paper again. “And Miss Matritz?”

“Mercedes? You know what, maybe just put her with Annette,” Felix said, peering over Matthew’s shoulder. “That’s one less room to prepare and they’re going to be staying up until 3 a.m. talking anyway.”

“With Lady Annette?” Matthew said, sounding so shocked that Felix wondered if he’d stumbled into yet another impropriety. “But – well, that room is rather at full occupancy, your grace.”

“What?” Felix asked, and he finally located Annette’s name on Matthew’s rooming chart – next to his, in the duke’s master suite. “Goddess, Matthew, no. I’ll be in my same bedroom as always. Leave Annette where she is.”

“You will need to move into the duke’s quarters eventually, your grace,” Matthew said, even as he crossed out Felix’s name and replaced it with Mercedes. “I assumed that after your wedding would be the perfect time to –”

“This isn’t really the perfect time for much of anything,” Felix said. “We can figure out, um, duke stuff later. After everyone’s left.” He looked at the chart, which finally did seem to have everyone’s names in some semblance of order. “Everyone can live with this, I’m sure,” he said. Then, remembering that he had showed up late in the evening with several times the number of people Matthew had been anticipating, he added, “Great work, Matthew,” under his breath.

Felix suppressed a yawn as he wandered away from his steward. It was close to midnight at this point, and it had been an admittedly long day. It had been chaos upon arriving at the Fraldarius estate, and he had never been more grateful that Ingrid and Sylvain knew the castle almost as well as he did. He’d lost track of people as Matthew and the head of the stables and a very angry head cook all vied for his attention, but it was easy to follow the sound of chatter and laughter towards the large first floor parlor.

The door was ajar, and he could see Sylvain lounging on the floor next to a low table, with the couches and chairs dragged into a central circle. He was distracted from sizing up the gathering, however, when he noticed Fantine standing against the doorway, looking into the room with a faint smile on her face. She turned when she heard him approaching.

“I’m glad she has so many friends,” she said, smiling at Felix with a warmth he wasn’t quite sure he deserved. “And they seem so lovely. One worries, don’t you think? When she went away to school, I worried so much.”

“Mm,” said Felix noncommittally. “They’re okay.”

Fantine reached up and straightened his collar, which was a lost cause at this point, then continued on to try to smooth the many, many wrinkles and tears that had accumulated in his shirt over the day. “You must be so tired, Felix dear,” she said, frowning at him the way his mother used to when he and Glenn would come into the house covered head to toe in mud or grass stains or scrapes and bruises. “What a long day for you both!”

“’Snot so bad,” Felix mumbled. “Probably worse for you; at least we kind of knew what was going on.”

“Well,” Fantine said diplomatically. “It was very exciting, at least.”

They stood staring at each other for a moment, then Felix, to have something to say, said, “We’ve put you up on the third floor. I’m told it was my mother’s favorite guest room. If you want, I can have a servant escort you there?”

“The one that looks out over the gardens? I remember the lavender décor; she seemed quite fond of her work,” Fantine said with a faint, nostalgic smile.

“Violet,” Felix corrected without thinking. “You’ve been here before?”

“I didn’t travel much, after Annette was born,” Fantine said, not quite answering the question. “I was always sad I didn’t get to see your mother before – well, I was happy to meet you, finally, you know.” She reached up and patted Felix on the cheek fondly, and he looked away, finding it suddenly hard to speak. “I can find my way to my room, thank you dear,” she said, and he was grateful to her for changing the subject. “Do make sure that Annette gets to bed at a reasonable hour, won’t you? Someone has to.”

She turned away in a swish of skirts, politely hailing a passing servant girl as she walked towards the stairwell. Felix took her place at the doorway, looking in on the jovial chaos of the parlor that evening.

The room had two main couches with a low table between them, some arm chairs, and a large standing piano in the corner. Blue Lions were draped on practically every available surface, and spilling over onto the floor. Ingrid was laying on a couch, bandages poking out from underneath her shirt, absently playing with Sylvain’s hair as he sat on the floor beside her. Dimitri was splayed in a heavy armchair that he’d dragged from the corner with undoubted ease, and for a moment he looked so much like a king on a throne that Felix had to cast another sharp glance at him before tearing his eyes away to avoid eye contact. Even the piano bench was taken, by Dedue, who silently watched the proceedings, his fingers lazily ghosting over the keys on occasion – Felix wondered if he’d played.

Dedue and Ashe had soothed the nerves of the frazzled chef and taken over the kitchen earlier that evening, and plates of sandwiches were scattered around, some food barely touched and some reduced to crumbs. Felix saw Ingrid reaching futilely to try to grab the other half of Dimitri’s sandwich, which he passed over to her once her flailing arm drew his eyes away from Annette, who was in the middle of some story.

Annette was stretched out on the opposite couch, her head resting on Mercedes’s lap and her feet propped up so they were just tapping against Ashe. Armor had been long set aside and most people were lounging in more comfortable clothes, but Annette was still in her wedding dress. It spilled over the side of the couch and pooled at her feet, and she seemed to disappear into it. As Felix looked over to her she hoisted herself onto one elbow and pointed a finger accusingly at Sylvain, who was laughing so hard at something she had said that he was having trouble keeping his balance, one hand grasping Ingrid to keep him upright.

“It – it wasn’t like that! I didn’t know!” she protested, her face burning red all the way down to her neck.

“I always told him,” Sylvain gasped between laughs. “He wouldn’t need a sword to find a woman. Turns out I was _wrong_.”

He dropped Ingrid’s hand and collapsed to the floor, burying his face in a throw pillow as his shoulders shook with laughter.

“I wouldn’t have stabbed him! I wouldn’t have! And that was before he proposed, anyway!” Annette yelled, which only made Sylvain laugh harder. Ashe patted her knees sympathetically while she buried her face in Mercedes’s lap. Mercedes, sage as always, took no sides, and ran her fingers through Annette’s hair fondly.

“Well, I think it’s impressive,” Ingrid spoke up through a bite of Dimitiri’s sandwich. “I’ve threatened to stab him for much less.”

Felix cleared his throat loudly and the room swiveled towards him. Annette peeked out from her shelter in Mercedes’s lap, her hair falling in her eyes as she gave him an absentminded smile.

“Rooms are ready,” he said, not bothering to raise his voice much. Sylvain could stop cackling if he wanted to hear properly. “Talk to me or Matthew and we can get a servant to escort you to your room for the night. You have to make your own fires, and breakfast is going to be in the dining hall, not delivered to your rooms. It’s a big inconvenience to have you all here, so if I catch you saying anything rude to the servants, I’ll kill you. Let’s go.”

Dimitri sat up straight and gave Felix a wide, sincere smile that made him grimace reflexively. “I’m sure we would never – we’re much indebted to your hospitality tonight, Fe –”

“You’re terrible at this,” called Ingrid from where she continued to lay on the couch. “Is that your version of being a host?”

“Let Annette make all the speeches from now on,” Sylvain added. “She’ll be much better at it.”

Felix growled something incomprehensible that was lost in the commotion regardless, as people began pulling themselves to their feet and drifting into individual conversations and doing their best to put the parlor into some semblance of order. As they filed out in ones and twos, Felix afforded Sylvain a glare and avoided eye contact with Dimitri as much as possible. He grabbed Annette’s elbow as she walked out the door, pulling her into the hallway with him.

“Hullooooo, Felix,” she sang, swinging into him and bracing a hand against his arm to keep from falling over. She was practically glowing as she blinked up at him blearily. He’d seen her before like this – drunk, but on laughter and gossip and sleep-deprivation rather than anything Ashe had salvaged from the kitchens. It had been a while since she smiled like that.

“You good?” he asked. Whatever she’d done to her hair for the wedding had been completely upended by her throwing herself around an open-air carriage going twice the recommended speed. Someone – Mercedes probably, or Annette herself – had attempted to braid it back into place. Felix pushed a rogue strand of hair from out of her eyes without thinking.

“Mm,” she agreed, smiling up at him. “Did you get dinner? You must be tired.” From the unconnected nature of her concerns, Felix chanced that he could avoid both of them. The last thing he needed this evening was a competition with Annette to see who could worry more.

“I put Mercedes in your room for tonight until we can open up some more guest rooms,” he said glancing over at Mercedes, who was walking in their direction. “I hope that's all right.”

Annette brightened noticeably at this. “Of course it’s all right. Girls night!” She said this last part more to Mercedes than to Felix, seeming to sense her presence and twisting eagerly to grab both of her hands. “Felix says you’re with me for the evening,” she informed Mercedes excitedly. “I can finish telling you about that nice guard I tried to set on fire; I think you’d like him.”

“Ooh, what fun,” Mercedes said, affording Felix a brief smile but for once not joining the chorus of accusing him of being tired, which was generally her favorite subject. “And I can finish taking a look at that shoulder; I can’t believe you kept casting after a direct hit like that.”

“Well, Felix couldn’t fight her! He was busy crashing the carriage into things,” Annette giggled, and Felix wanted to protest but she was smiling as she looked back at him and so he settled on looking at the suddenly-fascinating tile pattern on the floor instead.

“If it was me, I would sleep, but whatever makes you happy,” he grumbled.

“Would you?” Mercedes asked, and she beamed at Felix when he looked back at her. “Annie tells me I need to take a look at _your_ shoulder as well, Felix. Or your whole arm. Or maybe just your whole body; to hear her tell it you’ve been ignoring any and all medical advice.”

“Less ‘ignoring’ and more ‘doing the exact opposite,’” Annette grumbled, pouting at Felix. He returned a glare, which didn’t intimidate her in the slightest.

“So? Before breakfast? I’m sure I can find the infirmary and I can patch you right up,” Mercedes said. Felix hid a grimace. Mercedes had chosen the right specialization; it had taken her less than half a day to find a reason to fuss over him. Still, his leg could still give out when he was least expecting it, and he’d basically pushed the pulsing pain in his arm to a constant at the back of his head, and they were supposed to march on Fhirdiad once they reunited with Claude and the remaining troops –

“Tomorrow morning is fine,” he said quickly, before Mercedes tried ripping off his jacket and casting spells on his arm in the hallway. “You want me to show you where your room is?”

His father’s rooms – the duke’s quarters, Felix mentally corrected himself – were buried high up and at the heart of the castle, though the windows faced the front courtyard of the palace. Felix had avoided the quarters for the past few years, whenever possible, and even now he felt a strange trepidation with each corridor and each flight of stairs. Mercedes and Annette noticed none of this. In fact, Felix had his doubts that they even noticed where they were going or that they would be able to find their way back to it the next day. He couldn’t keep tabs on their conversation – Mercedes had sent some letter to some duke or a duke had sent some letter to her, or maybe he wasn’t a duke but wanted to be – but it didn’t really matter. Annette’s words, and her reacting gasps, and her laughter, all blended together into a steady hum that overpowered his own echoing footsteps as he led them deeper into the castle. She sounded more like home than his home did. He had to stave off disappointment when they finally reached his father’s door.

Well, the duke’s door. His door, he supposed, if he thought about it.

He didn’t like to think about it.

“Here,” he said, pointing to the door and taking a step back. “They were actually expecting you, Annette, so there room should be prepared but, um – I guess just let me know if you need, um, stuff.”

“I think I’m going to pop over and see if Ingrid has an extra nightgown for Annette. She stays here a lot, doesn’t she?” Mercedes said. “It’s just – up the stairs and to the left, she said?”

“Down the stairs and straight – do you need help finding it?” Felix asked, desperate to keep Mercedes from wandering smack into Sylvain’s room, which were the directions she had described.

“I’m sure it’s fine! Don’t you worry about me!” sang Mercedes, cutting him off and practically rushing away before Felix could correct her. This left him with Annette, standing awkwardly outside the door, and he wished she’d make a move to go in, or at least say goodnight, so he could leave.

“They were expecting me?” she asked instead, looking at him in sleepy confusion. It had to be well past midnight by now.

“Well, I was supposed to arrive in Fraldarius today with a bride. Not an army.” Felix shrugged. “They prepared for the bride.”

“Oh! Of course,” Annette said, blushing. “So this room is –”

“It’s the duke’s quarters, yeah,” Felix answered. “Is that weird? That’s weird, isn’t it. I can find you somewhere else – Sylvain can sleep in the stables, his room is nice, I guess.”

“No no, it’s fine,” Annette said quickly. “I just – it’s fine! But isn’t this kind of your room? Since you’re the duke now? Where are you going to sleep, if Mercedes and I kicked you out?”

“I have a bed – I mean, I have a bedroom. My own bedroom. This is my home,” Felix said. Words were hard. “Don’t worry about it.”

Annette looked as if she were going to continue worrying about it, so Felix reached out and grabbed her hand. She glanced down at their intertwined fingers, momentarily distracted, and Felix added, “Just get some sleep, okay?”

Annette, to his surprise, giggled at this. “You know,” she said, swinging their hands slightly, the forward momentum tugging Felix a step closer. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to sleep in a bed that wasn’t my own, but I think if I never see my bedroom in Dominic again, it will be too soon.” She dropped his hand and crossed her arms, taking a step back towards the door. “Guess I don’t have a home to go back to now, huh?”

Felix looked down at the floor, because he was a coward. The rug had little designs of the Fraldarius Crest running across the edges. It was atrocious, and Annette seemed so far away, three Crests between them.

“If it helps, you always have a room at Fraldarius, if you want one,” he said, crossing his arms to mirror Annette’s. “Maybe not this one. I mean, unless you really like it. I don’t know.”

Annette laughed – softly, but genuinely. “Felix, I –” she paused and looked up at him. Her eyes were stormcloud gray in the low lighting of the hallway sconces, the light catching off the matching ring on her finger that Felix selfishly hoped she would continue to forget to take off.

“Annie?” he prompted, daring to step one step closer. Two Crests between them now.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said finally, softly. “I’m glad it was you.”

Felix wanted to ask her to stay, then, to tell her to keep the room and the ring and his heart and all of Ingrid’s spare pajamas and whatever else she wanted. But when he took another step forward (one Crest between them), he realized her fingers were shaking and she was biting her lip and she couldn’t quite look at him anymore. And he remembered that he’d already given her what he’d promised her, and what she’d asked of him, and that he didn’t have a claim to offer anything more.

He reached behind her and turned the doorknob, swinging the door inward with a slight push.

“Seriously, get some sleep,” he told her, giving her his best attempt at a frown as he looked down at her. She gave him her best attempt at a smile in return as she disappeared through the doorway with a final whispered goodnight.

Felix found his room without noticing how he got there. He fell face-first into bed without remembering taking his shoes off. He’d hoped that would mean he would fall asleep without remembering being awake, but he counted minutes and then hours and then the faint hint of dawn before a worthless sleep finally found him.

***

Felix lined up his shot carefully. It had been weeks since he’d used a bow properly, as the training grounds in Dominic weren’t properly distanced for bow practice. (Annette said their bowman got practice by hunting in the fall, which didn’t seem right, but Felix had better things to argue about.) Still, the feeling of holding a bow came back naturally enough, if not as comfortable as the feeling of drawing a sword. He just had to keep focus if he was going to get a bullseye.

Mercedes had sweetly informed him that if anyone found him with a sword in his hand in the next forty-eight hours, she would tell Annette and Annette would murder him. Mercedes was better at healing magic than Annette, even Felix had to admit that. Her devotion to the goddess was so complete it bordered on profane again, but it got results. After a full hour of Mercedes poking and prodding at him, mumbling a conversation to an unseen deity with her hands glowing all the while, Felix felt in possession of a full set of working limbs for the first time in months.

Mercedes had limited herself to four or five implications that he was working too hard, which showed a lot of restraint on her part. She’d been less measured with her unsubtle remarks that he had been lucky Annette had taken such good care of him, which poked at him like the scalpels she didn’t bother picking up. 

“Of course, she was very lucky to have you, too, Felix!” she said, smiling at him as if he was a statue of the goddess herself, or at the very least a minor saint. “I can’t think of anyone who I’d rather see looking after our Annie!”

“Are we done here?” Felix asked, shrugging his coat on before she could begin to reply.

Mercedes had begrudgingly cleared him for bow practice, possibly knowing he would head directly to the training grounds no matter what she told him. So Felix aimed his arrow and concentrated on the target and tried to fill his head with silence. The form of the bow came naturally. Lining up the shot was where he had to concentrate. Lining up the shot and ignoring the music at the back of his mind and letting the arrow fly.

“Felix! I didn’t think you’d be on the training grounds at this hour!”

Felix’s arrow swung wide and embedded itself at the outer edge of the target. He swallowed a curse and turned to see Ashe at the edge of the training grounds, a bow slung over his shoulder already. He gave Felix a wide, nervous smile, and Felix had the irrational suspicion that Mercedes had sent Ashe after him to make sure he stuck to bows and nothing else.

“Can I join you? Perhaps a bit of friendly competition?” Ashe asked, sidling up next to Felix and swinging his bow around. Felix frowned. Ashe would win this friendly competition; it wouldn’t even be close. Still, the illusion of competition might give him the edge he needed to actually concentrate that morning, and another voice might keep him from imagining Annette’s. There were worse offers.

“Do what you want,” he said, turning back to the target and trying another shot, more quickly and decisively, now that he had an active audience.

“Excellent!” Ashe said. His arrow followed so closely after Felix’s that Felix wasn’t sure when he’d had time to fire it, and it embedded itself firmly in the bullseye two targets to the right of Felix’s. “I guess that’s my target!” Ashe added cheerfully, stepping back to let Felix take another shot.

In Felix’s defense, he got two bullseyes over the course of the round. Ashe got five, but was still gracious enough to trot over to the targets and clear the arrows, taking his victory a foregone conclusion rather than a celebration.

“Another round?” asked Felix. He didn’t have anything better to do.

“Mm,” agreed Ashe, and landed another bullseye on a completely different target. “Let me try a little to my left,” he explained. “Dedue’s worried I’m weak on that side.”

Felix nodded curtly. He of all people could respect refining perfection. He kept his same target, pulling the bowstring back carefully and squinting one eye closed as he concentrated on repeating his previous shot’s success.

“So, Felix, what are your intentions with Annette?”

The arrow swung so wide it missed the target completely and lodged itself in the back fence of the training ground.

“What?” Felix snapped.

“Well, you know,” Ashe said, and Felix most certainly did not know. “I guess the old-fashioned question would be whether you were going to marry her, but you’ve already done that!” He gave a nervous laugh and hit another perfect bullseye on his preferred target. Felix stood in silence, glaring at Ashe, not bothering to reach for another arrow even though it was his turn. Ashe continued to fill the silence, “I just – it’s really obvious Annette likes you! And I think you should make it clear what you want from her, so she doesn’t, um, get her feelings hurt.”

“What are you, her father?” Felix said, shooting a glare he generally reserved for Sylvain in Ashe’s direction. Ashe seemed to wilt under it, but stood his ground.

“I mean – obviously Sir Gilbert has always valued Annette’s independence! I don’t mean it like that –”

“How else could you mean it?”

“– I just think, a nice girl like Annette, she deserves to know if you really care about her.”

Felix’s glare intensified. “Of course I care about Annette; don’t be an idiot.” He was surprised by the vitriol in his voice as he spoke.

Ashe narrowed his eyes and turned away from Felix. Carefully, he drew back his bowstring and let another arrow fly. It whipped across the field and embedded itself in a perfect bullseye in Felix’s target.

“Well, does she know that?” he asked, eyes straight ahead, not on Felix, assessing his work carefully. “She wasn’t talking like this marriage was a permanent arrangement last night.”

“Of course it’s not a _permanent arrangement_ ,” Felix said. He tried to focus on the target, but his concentration was flaking. “I’m not in the habit of tricking girls into marrying me. Annette can do what she wants.”

“What if she wants to be married to you?” Ashe asked, landing another bullseye while Felix hesitated. Felix looked over to him, and his eyes were wide and sincere, like when he talked about loyalty and honor and other pointless things. Felix should have known he’d treat marriage with the same mindless devotion that he treated everything else.

“She doesn’t.” Felix said tersely, refocusing on the target. His arrow hit directly to the left of center.

Ashe dropped his bow to his side and took a step toward Felix. “But you care for her! You just said!” he exclaimed. He took a deep breath; this clearly constituted quite the emotional outbreak for him. “I don’t understand you at all!” he added, almost a whine.

“That’s not my problem,” Felix said flatly. “And that’s not your business.”

“Just talk to her, okay?” Ashe said, and Felix took a step back before he could grab his arm. “I don’t know what’s going on between you two, exactly, but I don’t understand how –”

“A-a-a-she! Ashe, are you here?”

Felix whipped his head towards the sound of Annette’s voice, then immediately tried to course correct, looking back towards the practice grounds. He caught Ashe badly hiding a smile as he lifted his arm in greeting.

“Good morning, Annette!” he called out, and Annette brightened when she saw him, doubling her pace as she walked towards them. “I didn’t expect you to be up this early!”

Annette laughed, the kind of cheerful, easy, meaningless laugh Felix had almost forgotten. “I was _going_ to sleep in, but Mercie got up early to treat Mr. Injuries here,” she said, gesturing vaguely to Felix. “I couldn’t fall back asleep after that!”

“I don’t blame you!” Ashe said, grinning at her. “Lots to be excited about. Are you wanting to use the training grounds?”

“No, I’m here on a _mission_ ,” Annette said, leaning in towards Ashe conspiratorially. “Dedue has somehow taken over the kitchen for lunch. He was hoping you could help him with prep. I tried to volunteer but he reminded me I’ve been banned from kitchen duty for the next eighty-seven years.”

“Eight-eight,” muttered Felix.

Ashe winced. “Ah, yes, the salmon incident. Well, I’d be happy to help!” He flashed far too wide of a smile at Felix. “I guess I yield our little competition, Felix! You win this time.”

He waggled his eyebrows up and down so violently that Felix was concerned they might fall off his head entirely. Felix responded with a scowl that Ashe perhaps did not deserve, which was only matched in intensity by the absolute delight on Annette’s face as she bid Ashe goodbye, sending him off to kitchen duty to explain to Dedue how his left form was improving and goddess knew what else.

Felix looked at her as she waved Ashe off, a process that had at least three hugs and took a remarkable amount of time, given that they were going to see each other at lunch. She was wearing a dress several inches too long for her, and it swished around her feet and threatened to trip her at any moment. He wondered if she’d borrowed that from Ingrid, as well – the contents of her trunk were scattered somewhere between here and Dominic, and she couldn’t very well wear her ripped up wedding dress until she returned to Garreg Mach. The dress was a pretty shade of blue, and it had too many bows at the sleeves for Ingrid’s liking. Felix wondered if Ingrid would just let Annette keep the dress when this was all over. Annette’s hair flashed red and gold against the blue in the morning sun, and the skirt floated around her as she finally turned away from Ashe and back to Felix.

It was possible she caught him staring.

“I’m sorry, I stole your sparring partner,” she said, walking towards him. “I could try if you want, but it would be a bit one-sided; I’m terrible at bows.”

Her tripping was inevitable. Felix saw it coming from the moment she stepped on the training grounds. He caught Annette easily enough; that had never been the problem. She looked up at him laughed sheepishly, one hand caught in his jacket and the other bracing against his arm.

“Maybe just focus on keeping yourself upright, for now,” Felix said. He bit back a smile as Annette scowled in reply. “Where are you heading next? I’ll walk you there,” he offered. “Fraldarius cobblestones are notoriously uneven, you know.”

“Don’t tease me, you villain. It’s not my fault Ingrid’s so tall.” Annette pulled herself up using Felix’s arm as leverage and fussed with her overly long skirts so that they fanned out around her. “At any rate, I’m not really headed anywhere. No one in the castle will let me _do_ anything. I think Dedue sent me after Ashe just to get me out of his hair.”

“I don’t think it’s in line with Faerghus’s noble history of chivalric nonsense to immediately put newly-rescued hostages to work, Annette,” Felix said. “You could always, I don’t know, rest. Take a break. Do nothing at all for five minutes.”

“I hate that,” Annette muttered, and there was surprising vehemence in her voice.

Felix didn’t bother biting back the smile this time. “Can’t say I didn’t try,” he offered.

“Mother mentioned you wanted to show me the gardens,” Annette said, giving Felix a shy, sideways glance as she said it. “But if you’re busy right now . . .”

“No, I’m not,” Felix said, a little too quickly, even as Annette was dragging out the last syllable. He’d said no such thing to her mother, or to anyone else. “I can’t shoot against an opponent who isn’t here. And besides,” he added. “Mercedes implied that if I trained too much today I’d risk reinjury in more ways than one.”

“Yes, I told her how awful you’ve been this month; she has no pity for you. And if you’re not careful, I’ll hit you with a wind spell when you’re not looking.” Annette flicked her fingers at him, and tiny green puffs of air flew by him, ruffling his hair. “Whoosh whoosh,” she sang.

“Is that a new song or just the sleep deprivation?” Felix asked, dropping his hand from where he’d caught her around the waist and running his fingers through his hair to try to straighten it. It probably didn’t work.

“Felix!” Annette protested, once again managing to put every possible accusation into the two syllables of his name. “I’m just happy to be here! And that my father is safe, and that Mercie came all this way to see me, and that you – that your arm is better.” She smiled up at him and Felix felt his stomach flip. “What more could I want?” she asked sweetly.

“Mm, can’t really think of anything,” Felix said, offering his arm again, which Annette took with one hand while gathering up her skirt with the other. “But let’s go find you some hydrangeas to stare at, all the same.”

“Is your target the left one?” Annette asked as they left, craning her neck to see the now-empty practice grounds. “You did awfully good, didn’t you!”

“There were some lucky shots,” Felix muttered. He steered her up and over a step she clearly was not going to notice, and Annette refocused her attention ahead.

***

“I can’t believe you don’t know the names of the flowers!”

Felix crossed his arms defensively. Annette was already crouched halfway into a patch of deep purple flowers; there was little chance of her tripping and not a long way to fall if she did.

“Why would I need to know the difference between a violet and a geranium?” Felix asked sullenly. “How is that ever going to help me in life?”

“They’re your flowers! They’re your gardens!” Annette said. She didn’t even bother looking up at him, instead digging her fingers into the dirt to prod at the placement of these particular violets, which were evidently geraniums.

Felix bit back a reply that the general duties of a duke didn’t involve giving garden tours, partially because that was exactly what he was doing right now, and he was doing a dismal job of it. He had no answers for Annette’s questions and couldn’t fake his way through guesses when he did venture a comment about any of their surrounding flora.

“You can lead the impromptu garden walkthrough next time, then, if that’s such a passion of yours,” he said instead. It wasn’t much more sensible of a counterargument – Annette would no doubt have better things to do after the war than hang around the Fraldarius gardens – but she didn’t seem inclined to pick holes in his logic. She twisted to look up towards him, and he couldn’t help but notice the streak of dirt across her cheek. He wanted to run his fingers from her ear to her jawline. He pinched the inside of his elbow instead, keeping his arms still crossed. Annette beamed up at him.

“What, and miss your flawless descriptions? I wouldn’t trade that for all of eastern Fódlan,” she said, her smile taking a wickedly gleeful edge to it. “I particularly liked the ‘purpley flowers’ and the ‘shrubbery where Sylvain got stuck in while chasing a woodchuck one time.’”

“So glad I’m performing acceptably as a host,” Felix said dryly. “My father would be so proud.” He held out a hand and Annette took it. There was dirt under her fingernails, and Felix absently ran his thumb along the tips of her fingers as she regained her standing balance.

“Ugh, I know, don’t tell my mother I was out here without gloves,” she said, rolling her eyes and curling her fingers into a fist. “Improper.”

“Looks like we’re both model children,” Felix muttered, and it drew a smile from Annette. She looped her arm back in his, curling her fingers inward in the loose fabric of his jacket, and Felix made a conscious effort not to stare at her fingertips or the smudge on her cheek any more.

“Will you make any changes to the garden when you’re – well, after the war, I guess?” Annette asked as they made their way back towards the castle. It felt strange to hear her imply he had any sort of authority over the castle, but stranger still to hear anyone talk about the end of the war. Still, it was creeping into conversations, a distinct possibility rather than an optimistic dream. If they could take Fhirdiad, first.

Felix didn’t say any of this. He shrugged instead. “Probably not,” he said, looking around the flower beds and miniature topiaries he had tried and failed to impress Annette with. “I think my mother had a lot of say in how these particular gardens were laid out. I don’t see much point in changing things without reason. Maybe I’ll replace those geraniums with violets.” He cast a final glare back at the poorly-named flowers.

Annette giggled, leaning into him. “Leave them alone, they’re nice,” she said, her shoulder bouncing off his playfully. She looked up at him, all pink cheeks and blue eyes and damn dirt smudges that he needed to leave well enough alone. “I’m sure your mother would be glad to know you value her work so highly,” she said gently, and Felix looked away, resting his eyes on the thornbush Sylvain had gotten caught in a decade ago.

“Don’t try to guilt me into learning the plant names,” he said roughly, his voice rasping slightly. “Violet things should be named violet; it’s a stupid naming system.”

“Villain,” Annette whined. “I was being sincere!”

“Well, then, she’d be glad you liked them,” Felix muttered, glancing down at her. “I’m being sincere, as well.”

Annette’s scowl turned into a smile, soft and shy. “Okay,” was all she said in reply, but Felix looked away, his ears burning, all the same.

They didn’t say much after that, slowly weaving their way through the flower beds and back to the castle. Felix tried a few haphazard guesses at the flowers Annette had pointed out to him earlier and took her teasing laughter when he got it wrong. He was maybe getting better at identifying them.

They were past the garden walls and walking down the wide pathway that led to the castle entrance when Felix spotted Dimitri. He stood by the wide entry doors of the castle, his back to them, lost in thought. Felix had the sudden, irrational urge to drag Annette back into the gardens, or maybe push her into an alcove on the outer wall or a nearby bush and follow after her before they could be spotted. But before he could decide whether this was actually a good idea, Dimitri turned at the sound of their footsteps.

For a brief moment, a look of panic flashed across his face, and he looked as if he also would jump into a nearby bush if given the option. But Felix had never had luck in anything, and so instead, Dimitri took a deep breath and walked towards them. He even managed a smile in Annette’s direction.

“Felix! I thought you’d be on the training grounds this morning. I was coming to find you,” he said. He gave Annette a slight bow. “I hope I’m not interrupting you both.”

“Haven’t been cleared to fight yet,” Felix growled.

“No, there was nothing important –” Annette started at the same time. They looked at each other, and both stopped talking, and looked away.

“Mm, yes, I see,” said Dimitri, looking away as well. “I have some news from Garreg Mach, but if it would be easier to discuss it after lunch –”

“We just said we weren’t doing anything important,” Felix snapped. He knew without looking that Annette had slid her gaze back up toward him, her eyes sharp and observing, and he tried to avoid a frown as he slid his arm further around her waist. “Let’s hear it, then.”

Dimitri cast a glance at them, and then looked around the wide courtyard welcoming guests and residents to the castle. “Ah, yes. Perhaps we could go somewhere more . . . private, to discuss?”

Felix sighed. So this wasn’t a message, but a _discussion_. “I’m sure my father’s study can accommodate three,” he said, closing his eyes and trying to remain civil. His mood didn’t improve when he felt Annette tugging away from him and he looked to see her taking a step closer to Dimitri.

“Actually, highness, is there any chance you’ve seen my father this morning?” she asked. “I haven’t had a chance to speak with him since last night, and things were quite hectic then.”

“Yesterday certainly was . . . a day, for you both,” Dimitri said. “I did run into him taking a walk this morning. I believe he mentioned that Mercedes wanted him to drop by the infirmary at some point today. Two months imprisonment is concerning from a health perspective.” He suddenly frowned, realizing who he was talking to. “How are _you_ feeling, Annette?” he asked, his voice tinged with worry. “If you would like us to escort you to Mercedes, I’m sure you also would benefit from –”

“No, don’t trouble yourself. I assure you Mercedes has already had ample opportunity to fret about my well-being,” Annette said with a laugh, and she seemed to pirouette out of reach of Dimitri as she began to walk away.

“If you’re sure,” Dimitri said hesitantly. Felix felt a pang of guilt for not asking Annette how she’d slept, or whether her shoulder injury had been attended to, or if she had spoken to her family, or any of the kind, decent questions that Dimitri, for all his faults, could conjure at a moment’s notice.

“Trust me, this has been my best morning in _months_ ,” Annette smiled up at him. “And besides, the terms of my imprisonment were _quite_ different from my father’s. But yes, I think I will go try to find him. Worst case scenario, I’ll have Mercie to chat with!”

“Annette, wait,” said Felix, reaching out and grabbing her arm before she could get too far. She looked up at him, surprised and just a bit suspicious. Felix hesitated, then ran his thumb across her cheek, pressing into her skin to try to smudge the dirt away in one swoop. It ended up taking two or three tries, enough time for Annette’s face to shift from surprise with a bit of suspicion to suspicion with a bit of surprise.

“Dirt on your cheek,” he offered by way of explanation. “Mercie would tease you.”

She scrunched her nose at him. “You could’ve told me _earlier_ , villain,” she protested. “Any other notes before I go?”

“You’ve got dirt under your fingernails,” Felix said solemnly. Annette’s pout became more pronounced, and she waved his hands away with a huff.

She flung open the large double doors of the castle with some difficulty, leaving Dimitri and Felix alone in the entryway as she disappeared into the castle. But her annoyance was short-lived, and Felix was vaguely comforted by the final smile she turned to give them before the door closed behind her, although such a turn did seem to cause her to get tangled up in her dress again, and she was somewhat flailing as the door closed with an authoritative slam.

“Is she doing . . . alright?” Dimitri asked after a moment.

“I don’t know, ask her yourself,” Felix snapped, walking away in the opposite direction. “Come on, the gardens will honestly probably offer us all the privacy you could want, and I’m eager for this conversation to be over.”

He led Dimitri back the way he came, through the gate leading into the gardens and past the carefully cultivated beds of cornflowers and chrysanthemums. His pace was hurried, now, the gentle strolling from the previous hour completely forgotten. Felix had lost interest in studying the shapes and colors of the petals and learning the names of the ones Annette paid special attention to, but he had been right about one thing – the gardens were more or less abandoned at this hour. Dimitri could say whatever he wanted, if he would get on with saying anything at all.

Felix stopped by a corner filled with blue and pink hydrangea bushes and cast a sharp glance at Dimitri, who was absently looking at a bunch that held two colors on the same branch. “Well, what did you want?” he demanded. Dimitri dropped the branch and gave him a careful, considerate look.

“You haven’t been cleared to fight? I thought you saw Mercedes this morning,” he said, his eyebrows knitting together.

“I did. She’s a bishop, not a god,” Felix said brusquely. He touched his arm lightly. The pain had almost completely gone away, but Mercedes’s eyes had flashed terrifyingly when she assured him he could undo all her hard work. “I’ll be fine.”

“It’s your arm?” Dimitri clarified. Felix wanted to snap at him that there wasn’t much else it could be, but it occurred to him that he had sustained a good number of other injuries in his time at Dominic.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said instead. “I’ll be on the front lines at Fhirdiad. Stop worrying.”

“Felix, I –”

“I said stop it,” Felix cut him off, looking away. “Is this why you’re wasting my time?”

Dimitri sighed, and stepped away from the hydrangea bushes. He began walking down a side path, running his hand absently along the hedges that lined the perimeter. Felix grimaced, but had no choice but to follow him. If Annette’s pace was dreamlike and Felix’s was punishing, Dimitri walked slowly and deliberately, carefully scanning his surroundings the way he did on the battlefield.

“I received a messenger from Garreg Mach,” he said. He snapped a leaf of the outside hedge, and Felix would’ve yelled at him if he weren’t so used to Dimitri’s nervous fidgeting when he was talking. “They’ve successfully integrated the few Alliance troops Claude was able to bargain for with our existing Kingdom reserves. They’re ready to march when we give the word. They could be here as soon as tomorrow night if we send a dispatch immediately.”

“And then on to Fhirdiad in two days time,” Felix said, turning the plan over in his mind.

“Three days, maybe four,” Dimitri corrected. “We need to debrief, hold a war council, make a plan of attack. Not to mention a chance for the troops to rest.”

“If Cornelia didn’t follow us to Fraldarius then she no doubt rushed back to Fhirdiad,” Felix argued. “She knows we’re coming. Every second we waste is a second for her to prepare for our arrival.”

“That’s why I don’t plan on wasting the time,” Dimitri said. He had now completely shredded the leaf between his gloved fingers, and he tossed it into the hedges carelessly. Felix wondered if he even realized what he had done. He turned to Felix. “I told the courier to wait for my answer. Will Fraldarius be able to host the Kingdom army in two days time?”

“You’ve seen our barracks, boar,” Felix said. “And I’ve seen your army. It won’t be a problem.”

“I’m not worried about capacity,” Dimitri said. “But quartering troops here isn’t my decision to make.”

Felix winced, staring into the opaque surface of a pond that they’d stopped by. Dimitri stared as well, waiting for his answer. He’d already slipped into the customs and language of leadership while Felix struggled to even remember he was supposed to be making decisions. Felix plucked a leaf from the hedge behind them and flicked it into the water, creating the slightest of ripples. He was surprised the stick didn’t weigh the leaf down, but it bobbed on the surface happily enough.

“Tell the courier to spend the night; they’ve undoubtedly had a long journey,” he said, kicking at the gravel under his boot. A pebble rolled into the pond, and actually sank. “You can send a messenger from Fraldarius; I’ll tell my steward to prepare for the army’s arrival by tomorrow evening.”

Dimitri nodded. “I’ll tell her straight away. Thank you, Felix.”

“Save your breath for when I do something useful,” Felix said shortly. If they marched on Fhirdiad in three days, he might actually have the chance to make good on that. He gave a final kick to the unfortunate gravel and turned to walk back to the castle.

Dimitri followed after him, just slowly enough that Felix had to adjust his pace to keep from walking an awkward distance ahead. “You know,” he said after a few moments of silence, “Gilbert thinks his brother is likely to swear fealty to the Kingdom once we retake the Capital, rather than siding with the Empire for the remainder of the war.”

“That seems accurate from what I know of him,” Felix said, resisting the immature temptation to disagree with Gustave on principle. “Dominic’s position is precarious, but I don’t think his loyalty to the Dukedom is particularly . . . authentic.”

“Mm,” agreed Dimitri. “Strange family.”

“Mm,” Felix muttered.

Dimitri stopped, suddenly, and cast a suspicious look around the gardens, although no one had wandered in within the last fifteen minutes. Felix turned and crossed his arms, waiting for Dimitri to either catch up or speak his piece.

“I hope he’s right, you know,” he finally said, his voice low enough that Felix felt compelled to inch forward just to hear him properly. “I would be quick to forgive him – for any of the rebelling territories, but especially Dominic. We need stability in the Kingdom after this, and I doubt Gilbert would want to return to govern Dominic.”

Felix frowned, shifting his weight to his lead foot, his hand resting on the handle of his sword though there was no danger lurking. “You could always give the land to Annette to govern,” he said, glaring steadfastly at the ground. “She’s in the Dominic line regardless; making her Baroness would hardly cause a political uprising.”

“I don't see why she’d want that!” said Dimitri with a laugh, and Felix looked up at him sharply.

“I don’t see why not,” he said, keeping his voice low to hide the snarl of annoyance. “She’s perfectly capable of running a territory. More capable than either of us, I imagine.”

“If the goddess were fair and justice, Annette would be ruler of Faerghus, not me,” said Dimitri, and Felix didn’t know why he sounded so damn _amiable_ all of the sudden. “But I mean – I’m sure she’ll want to remain here in Fraldarius, won’t she?”

Felix blinked at Dimitri, speechless, and Dimitri gave him a stupid, cheerful smile in return. Felix tried to form a coherent sentence, but couldn’t decide on which insult, rebuttal, or demand would best satisfy such a ridiculous statement.

He settled on, “ _What_?”

Dimitri’s smile dropped, the confused, wounded puppy look of his teenage years haunting his features for a brief moment. “It seems cruel to demand she stay in Dominic when I’m sure you’ll be in Fraldarius for much of the year. An entire country is a long separation for –”

“Annette isn’t staying in Fraldarius after the war. She wouldn’t be happy here.” Felix turned quickly and started marching out of the garden. They were so close to the public thoroughfare connecting to the castle, where if he was lucky he might run into some other member of the army to distract Dimitri, or at least a good place to hide.

Unfortunately, Dimitri’s stride was just as fast as his when he put his mind to it.

“She certainly seemed happy here a few moments ago,” he said. His voice wasn’t accusatory, like Ingrid, or insinuating, like Sylvian. He just had a quiet, understated confidence that he was right, and Felix hated it.

“That’s just how she looks, all the time. That’s just what – that’s what she’s like,” he said. He paused at the entry of the garden, shocked at how plaintive his own voice was, as if he was eleven and whining at Dimitri about a sparring match with wooden swords. 

“Felix,” Dimitri started, and it had the effect of stopping Felix from walking away, but he didn’t bother to let Dimitri continue that line of thought.

“Give her Dominic territory; make her a baroness today if you have to,” he said, turning to face Dimitri outright. Dimtiri had followed after him easily, and Felix glared up at him angrily.

Dimitri gave Felix a look that was suspiciously like pity. “You really think she’d want that, Felix?” he asked mildly.

“I don’t _know_ ,” Felix said, practically yelling now. He threw his arms towards the castle, where he’d last seen Annette falling through a door, clumsy and cheerful and utterly out of his grasp. “I don’t know anything about what Annette wants. Ask her yourself. Why can’t any of you actually _talk_ to her? Why do you all expect _me_ to do it?”

He could hear how nonsensical this argument was, so he once again turned to walk away, but Dimitri continued to be obnoxiously tall and capable of walking.

“Is everything – are you okay, Felix?” he asked, slightly hesitant. “I don’t mean to pry about the last month, and you certainly completed the mission successfully, but you and Annette –”

“Good. Don't pry. That’s a great idea,” Felix said through gritted teeth. They had reached the palace doors at this point, and Felix gave Dimitri a slight, sarcastic bow of farewell before pointing him towards the stables. “I have to go tell my steward about the incoming troops. I trust you’ll be able to find a messenger among my soldiers.”

Dimitri nodded, and Felix heaved open one of the large double doors with more force than he meant. He was halfway inside when Dimitri quietly added, “Felix?”

Felix turned, propping the door open with his shoulder, hoping his scowl communicated a proper amount of impatience.

“I just really do think she’d make a good duchess,” Dimitri said earnestly,

“Shut up, boar,” Felix muttered, and he let the door slam behind him.

He didn’t go to find Matthew; he hadn’t even bothered telling that lie convincingly. There would be time to arrange for the arrival of troops that afternoon. Instead, Felix wandered without thinking, until he found himself in his favorite childhood garden, the fountain as cheerful as ever in a way that frankly seemed disrespectful, given his mood. But the garden, as always, was impervious to his scowl, and that did make him feel somewhat better. And there were less flower names to learn here. Felix took a seat on a bench against the castle wall, facing the fountain, and wondered idly how long until the memory of Annette wandering through his mother’s flower garden would fade into a painful ache of loss, and how long until that ache would almost be a comfort again.

Felix leaned his head back against the castle wall and breathed, taking in the smell of his childhood and his past and not bothering to reconcile it with his present or his future. It was almost a comforting ache now, remembering being here with Glenn. Like pressing a bruise when you knew you shouldn’t. And no one could find him. And no one would ask him to explain anything.

He had about ten minutes of smug and melancholy contemplation before the crunching of footsteps in grass caused him to bolt upright and look suspiciously towards the sound. He was half-worried it would be Dimitri again, perhaps with an itemized list of all of Annette’s best qualities, but it was only Ingrid who walked around the corner. She froze when she saw him, casting a nervous glance around the garden to assess who else might be lurking in the bushes.

“Felix!” Ingrid exclaimed, her eyes widening. “Oh.”

“If you’re here to give me some sort of life advice, I’m good,” Felix grumbled. “How’d you even know I’d be here?”

“I mean, I didn’t,” Ingrid said, raising a quizzical eyebrow at him. She added softly. “This was Glenn’s favorite garden. That’s all.”

“Seiros. It was.” Felix winced, leaning his head back against the wall behind him. He didn’t look over at Ingrid when she took a seat next to him, but he moved enough to give her a comfortable seat.

“You okay?” she asked listlessly. It was the thing to say.

“I hate everyone we know,” Felix replied. “You okay?”

“Eh,” Ingrid said. Felix had memorized the shrug that came along with that _eh_ at this point. He lolled his head towards her, raising an eyebrow. Ingrid sighed and looked back towards the center fountain. “I still miss him,” she said. “I wish he was here. But then sometimes – sometimes I want to move on. And that hurts a lot worse, you know?”

“Umm,” Felix said, trying to remember how to be comforting. “Not really?”

“Like sometimes I’ll go a whole day without thinking about him, and it’s okay, and I’m okay,” Ingrid said. “And then I remember and I feel awful.”

“I mean,” Felix tried helpfully, “It happens.”

“I’m sorry,” Ingrid sighed. “I guess I shouldn't take this out on you, of all people.”

“No, it’s fine,” Felix said, leaning back against the wall, looking up at the sky. He and Glenn had spotted shapes in the cloud here when he was very little, how had he forgotten that? “It’s better than talking to any of our other asshole friends.”

Ingrid gave a snort at this. “Was it Sylvain?” she prompted. “I tried to tell him he needs to leave you alone about –”

“It wasn’t actually,” Felix said quickly. As with most things Sylvain, he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the end of that sentence.

“Oh?” Ingrid said, genuinely interested. “Who’s annoying you today, then?”

“You know,” Felix said with a shrug. “Mercedes. Ashe. Dedue, I suspect. Maybe Annette’s mother, I guess, kind of.”

“Felix, can you go five seconds without being awful to the nicest people in the world?” Ingrid demanded.

“Eh,” said Felix, mimicking her shrug. “Probably not.”

Ingrid’s punch to his arm was all performance and no follow-through. Felix smirked as he waved her away. Ingrid gave him a scowl and leaned back against the wall.

“Bet you thought things would get easier once you got back to Fraldarius, huh?” Ingrid asked, lazily closing her eyes.

Felix scoffed. “I’m not that stupid.”

Ingrid gave another snort of laughter, and they lapsed into silence. She eventually slipped her arm through his, resting her head on his shoulder.

Felix leaned back against the wall and found shapes in the clouds until they blended together into nothing at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After careful consideration following the last chapter I’ve decided the rest of the fic will be entirely people eating sandwiches and talking about flowers, thank you for supporting me in this bold new direction.
> 
> Hello I’m back! I missed you all; I hope you’ve been keep safe and well! Overall it was a pretty terrible vacation, I’m really not into these 2020 vacations, I think we should seek other models! I did watch a documentary on Rococo Art, and started a new Blue Lions file, and planned a Shakira-themed cross stitch project but I haven’t actually started on that. Also I read Beowulf; I'm all about the Spear-Danes these days. I think that’s all that happened on my end. We might be back to our original Thursday updates, although I think we’ll keep it at every other week for now. I gotta see what life is like once my semester starts; there’s a very good chance I’ll be throwing my computer in the ocean at some point in week 1 and obviously that slows the writing process down.
> 
> Anyway! Glad to be back, excited to spend some time outside of Dominic, excited for the Blue Lions to continue to be the absolute earnest disasters that we know and love. No update next week but I’ve got a piece for the Netteflix minibang coming out on Thursday if you want to circle back for that. Otherwise, I’ll see you in a couple weeks.
> 
> [Come find me on twitter; we can talk about the Spear-Danes together.](https://twitter.com/Rose3Writes)


	21. Annette Has Questions

Annette poked the needle into her finger and bit her tongue to stifle a sharp cry. Her mother noticed anyway, looking up at her with slightly raised eyebrows.

“Don’t ask me if I’m tired,” Annette said. She pulled her hand out from under the fabric and squinted at it to see if there was blood. There didn’t appear to be. She prodded at the injured finger with a frown.

“I would never,” Fantine protested, the picture of innocence. “I’ll just assume repeatedly stabbing yourself was a new hemming technique I hadn’t caught up on yet.”

“Ha ha hilarious,” Annette said grumpily, returning her attention to the hemline of the dress, but not before she caught her mother grinning to herself at her own joke.

They were surrounded by a pile of potential dresses, almost all of them too large for Annette in some form or another. Ribbons and laces could go a long way as far as that was concerned, but Annette was tired of tripping over herself every ten seconds – or evidently, every five seconds if Felix was around. After a brief conversation with her father in the infirmary, made somewhat unproductive by Mercie’s constant administration of medical checks, Annette had sought Felix’s steward out and begged if he had any dresses she could borrow during her stay. Matthew had been delightful, and delighted with her, and delighted to help.

The next few hours of the afternoon had been quite pleasant, despite Matthew’s repeated hints that the Lady of the House didn’t need to trouble herself with sewing when they had plenty of available servants. Annette had emerged the victor, however, with several dresses to try to hem up before dinner. If her mother would have rather been visiting the infirmary herself that afternoon, she made no complaints. Other than her inevitable teasing, they’d spent the afternoon in companionable silence beyond Annette’s occasional humming.

“There’s probably time for you to rest before dinner,” her mother said pleasantly. “If you wanted.”

Annette straightened up and spoke with dignity. “I have never been more awake in my entire life.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Fantine replied with a smile.

“Maybe I’ll be able to concentrate more if you told me a story,” Annette suggested. “That always helped when I was a child.”

“I’m afraid you’ve probably long memorized all my stories, Annette,” Fantine said, laughing. “But I’m all for pleasant conversation. What shall we talk about?”

“We certainly have enough topics to choose from,” Annette said, giving her mother a melancholy smile. “I’m afraid I haven’t been terribly open with you these past few days.”

“Well, I admit it was somewhat of a surprise to be pulled into a speeding carriage. And you could have saved me a good amount of sleepless nights planning elaborate ways to murder Cornelia and break your father out of the dungeons,” Fantine said. She pulled the thread taut and returned Annette’s smile. “But it wasn’t as surprising as you perhaps think it was. I somewhat suspected you had more than wedding-day jitters.”

“I wish I could have told you everything, but there was never time, and there were always people around –” Annette’s mother took her hand and squeezed it, and Annette cut off. She nodded, pulling her hand away. “If there’s anything you want to talk about now – I know we’re a bit past all that, but I always wanted to be honest with you and Father.”

“I think I figured most of it out – or close enough to it – somewhere between the fourth and fifth soldier swinging an axe at your father’s head,” Fantine said thoughtfully. She picked up her sewing again. “I guess I do have a question about timelines. Were you and Felix engaged before he came to Dominic, and you just redid the proposal for show? You didn’t mention it in your letters, but it seems quite a coincidence if he was planning to propose and just hadn’t gotten around to it yet.”

Annette had long finished the pot of tea they were splitting between them, or she would have surely choked on it. “I – we – Felix – we’re not _actually_ married. That was just part of – you said it yourself, I'm sure we can get the marriage certificate declared invalid once things have, well, settled down.”

“Well, that’s what I thought at first when I first realized it was a jailbreak, but you looked so panicked when I mentioned an annulment, I thought I must have misunderstood,” Fantine said.

Annette frowned. “I looked _panicked_ because multiple people were trying to kill us.”

“It was an emotional time,” Fantine agreed. The pause wasn’t quite long enough before she added, “You could just stay married to him, you know. He’s a nice boy. Did he show you the gardens?”

“Mother!” Annette exclaimed, putting her sewing down entirely. “I’m not the sort of person to get a husband through – through trickery and subterfuge!”

“I don’t see why not,” Fantine said, wrinkling her nose in slight confusion. “There have been much worse ways people have gotten husbands over the years – and wives, too, for that matter.” Her confusion turned into a frown. “Would he not make you happy? You seem so happy around him.”

“I –” Annette stopped, frowning at the borrowed dress she had almost finished hemming. “I’d want him to be happy, too,” she said finally, softly. “That matters more, doesn’t it?”

“Ah. Perhaps,” her mother said, nodding slightly. “In that case, I won’t ask you any more about your plans after the war, for now. But that does mean you have to choose the next topic of conversation, I think.”

Annette took a deep breath. She’d wanted this opening, somewhere in the back of her mind. She’d been waiting all afternoon, or even all week, for it. She took up her sewing again and concentrated very closely on the next stitch.

“Why do you know Dark Spikes?” she asked, her voice as careful and precise as the stitches she made along the hem. “Why do you know dark magic at all?”

There was a long pause, and Annette was almost afraid to look up. When she did look up, her mother was tight-lipped, the color slightly drained from her face. But she was nodding, slowly.

“You always did know how to cut to the heart of things, didn’t you?” she asked quietly. She glanced at the door, closed but unlocked, but of course there was no one lingering there. “Very well, “ she said finally. “I guess I do have one story left within me, after all.”

Annette put aside the sewing again, deciding perhaps it was time to give up on finishing this particular dress this particular afternoon. She tucked her legs under her leaned back against the arm of the couch, facing her mother. Fantine, in comparison, didn’t drop a stitch, and kept her focus on her handiwork as she began to speak.

“I first met Cornelia at the school of sorcery,” she explained. “She was a few years older than me, just about to graduate when I first joined the program. But she was . . . different, back then. The brightest student at the school, but she was kind even when she was busy. She took an interest in my studies, even though I assure you I was dumb as a rock my first year. She thought I had potential.” Fantine frowned. “I liked her,” she added.

Annette’s frown matched her mother’s. There were many words she could attribute to Cornelia, some of them even flattering, but kindness seemed antithetical. And Annette couldn’t help but remember that Cornelia thought she had potential, too, but it wasn’t pleasant when she told her this.

Fantine’s eyes flickered over Annette’s unhappy face, but she didn’t remark on it. “I didn’t hear from her until many, many years later. After your father left. Shortly after you got accepted into the School of Sorcery.” She shrugged. “Maybe she saw your name on the roster. She was in Fhirdiad then, and she wrote to me, saying she had heard about my situation and thought she might be able to help. Evidently she had work that would put me in contact with knights across Fódlan. I accepted her offer immediately.”

“You were in Fhirdiad while I was at the School of Sorcery?” Annette asked, interrupting. She had sent her mother long, weekly letters and longed for one afternoon of tea and conversation. The idea that such a thing had been possible –

But Fantine shook her head. “No, not for that first year,” she said. “I worked on research from Dominic and sent my results to her. It wasn’t until you moved to the officer’s academy that Cornelia asked me to relocate to Fhirdiad.”

“This still doesn’t explain why you know so much dark magic,” Annette said with a frow. “You’re not telling me you learned it through a correspondence course.”

“Oh no, I studied a bit of it at school. Dark Spikes was my specialty in tournaments for a while, you know,” Fantine shrugged. Annette remembered that her mother still entered Dominic’s yearly tournaments when she was very small, but she had mostly laid it aside by the time Annette was old enough to recognize spells beyond flashing colors. Fantine added, “I knew party tricks, essentially. Exhibition magic. I had the knack for it, but I preferred Reason. More stable, less dangerous. In that, I’ve always been honest with you.”

“So why would Cornelia contact you?” Annette asked. “It wasn’t your specialty.”

Fantine paused, and Annette worried suddenly she had asked the wrong question, although she wasn’t sure why. But her mother soon returned to her sewing, her stitches neat and precise and exactly as she wanted them. “Because I was desperate,” she said finally, her mouth drawn in a line. “Because I’d do what she asked. And I did do what she asked, for two years. One year sending her research notes, one year working in a laboratory in Fhirdiad. She told me once the work was done, the church would be begging to speak to me. I was foolish enough to believe her.”

She paused for breath, and Annette could tell she was giving her the space to ask questions. But Annette didn’t know exactly what questions to ask – she had so many, and perhaps some of them were wrong or insignificant, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer for all of them.

She finally broke in with a statement. “You were back in Dominic by the time I returned home.

Her mother always smiled when Annette said something clever. Her smile was broken today. “I knew, of course, from your letters, that Gustave wasn’t coming home. And it didn’t take long after that to realize that Cornelia’s project was – it was all crests and bodies and blood and – I lied to myself that it was worth something, but I couldn’t lie to myself forever.” Her smile disappeared completely now. “It was surprisingly easy to leave Fhirdiad – I had a daughter returning from the academy, I was needed in Dominic, and so on. Cornelia just . . . let me go. But I paid for it. I spent five years waiting for her to show up on my doorstep looking for me – or looking for you. She was always a little too interested in my talented daughter, top of her class in the Blue Lions house.” Fantine jabbed the needle through the hem of the dress with a force that would serve her well on a battlefield. “It was as if five years of nightmares had come true when I arrived at the estate last week and found out she’d taken you. I’d hoped she’d forget about our family entirely.”

“She said I should learn Dark Magic,” Annette said softly, looking at the backs of her hands, where the welts and lines from an overambitious spell were only now starting to fade. “She said I’d be useful at the capital.”

Fantine put down her needle and thread, at last. She set the dress to the side and hugged her arms around herself. “I suppose one thing about her didn’t change – she always could spot potential,” she muttered to herself. She looked up and Annette was horrified to see tears at the corners of her eyes. “I wanted to make our family whole so badly, and all I did was bring us so much danger. I’m so sorry, Annette.”

“I mean,” Annette said with a soft, bitter laugh. “I think at this point I know something about that.”

Her mother laughed, or maybe sobbed, and reached forward to pull Annette into a hug. Annette flung herself across the couch to close the distance between them and they stayed like that for a moment, Fantine gently stroking her hair like she was a child again. Annette could hear humming of an old, favorite nursery rhyme, but she might have imagined it.

“You shouldn’t have been the one to try to bring him back,” Fantine murmured into her hair. “I shouldn’t have made you feel this way. You – you were always enough, just you and me, just as we were. I was just too distracted by the darkness and the desperation to realize that.”

Annette pulled back, resting on her heels, and sniffled. She wiped the back of her hand across her face in a most unladylike manner. “I’ve been v-very happy, you know, Mother,” she said, her voice catching a couple of times. “Going to Garreg Mach, studying magic, being part of something so much bigger than Dominic. I don’t regret anything.”

“I regret not keeping you away from your uncle,” Fantine muttered darkly, dabbing her eyes with her sleeve. “Or stealing Crusher from the family vault and smacking him over the head myself.”

“It wasn’t all bad,” Annette said with a forced smile. “I didn’t get Crusher, but I did learn a spell that hurts to use, and got a husband who doesn’t want me, and look at all these lovely dresses that will never quite fit.”

“Such optimism,” her mother said flatly. “You must get that from your father.”

“Get what from me?” a grave voice said from the doorway of the room. Annete and Fantine both flinched, and Annette was surprised to see her father in the doorway, cleared by Mercedes to wander around the castle, and evidently unable to find Dimitri. He offered a small, tentative smile. “If it’s anything good, I assure you that you got it from your mother.”

“Gustave!” exclaimed Fantine. She started to stand but seemed to think better of it. Instead, she grabbed a dress completely different than the one she’d been working on and picked up the existing needle and thread to fix the hem in an entirely wrong color.

“I hope I’m not interrupting anything important,” Gustave said, taking a few hesitant steps into the room and closing the door behind him.

“Shouldn’t you still be in the infirmary?” Annette asked, wrinkling her nose slightly. She was trying to tell if he walked with a limp or just very stiffly, but it was difficult at only a few steps.

“If there was any reason to keep me there, Mercedes certainly would have found it,” her father said. “But I sustained no major injuries in the, erm – in the trip here. I’ve nothing to complain of that a good night’s sleep won’t fix.”

He took another few careful steps in. Annette’s mother reached over to the pile of dresses, which had been flung over a nearby armchair, and hastily moved them to the couch between her and Annette. He took a seat in the armchair, and for a moment things felt surprisingly like Annette’s childhood, until she reminded herself sternly that nothing at all about this situation was like her childhood.

They sat in silence for a few moments. Annette had a sudden, inexplicable desire for a fire to be burning and a book to read, despite the summer heat, just so she could have something to look at and listen to.

“I had a nice chat with Duke Fraldarius’s steward this morning,” Fantine finally said, looking up cheerfully. “He assured me that we were all welcome to stay here as long as we’d like. It’s very nice of him to say – I don’t think we’ll be welcome back in Dominic for some time.”

There was a pause.

“I’m told His Highness has decided to retake Fhirdiad, though I have yet to speak with him about the details,” Gustave said. “You could always relocate to the capital, once things are safe there. Or there’s a lovely village about a mile’s walk from Garreg Mach.”

“Those are certainly two completely opposite options,” Fantine replied with a smile that was almost assuredly forced.

They fell back into silence again. Annette would have given anything for any book in the entire world, including ones on crop rotation and ones written in other languages.

“Your mother says that Felix showed you the family gardens,” Gustave finally said.

“When did you two even _talk_ to each other?” Annette asked in exasperation.

The entire family was spared further conversation by the door flinging open and Felix himself stalking in. In retrospect, Annette wasn’t particularly surprised – anyone with any manners would have knocked, so it made a certain amount of sense that it was Felix. He blinked at the family in surprise, although Annette wasn’t sure what he was expecting. Recovering somewhat, he gave a slight nod to Fantine and turned to Annette.

“Matthew said you were here,” he said by way of explanation. “Mercedes is looking for you. Dinner.”

“Already? Wow, time flies!” Annette exclaimed with a little too much excitement, jumping up from her seat on the couch. Lunch had been an informal affair, but word had gotten out that afternoon that Dimitri was pushing for a more celebratory dinner. Annette turned to her mother expectantly, but she remained where she was.

“You two go on ahead; I just want to finish up this last little bit,” she said brightly, holding up the dress to demonstrate the task at hand. “I’m sure your friends are waiting for you, you’d better hurry along.”

“I can have dinner sent to you, if you want,” Felix offered, taking Annette’s arm as she walked by him. She glanced at him in surprise, but he didn’t appear to notice what he’d done. “I’d recommend it, to be honest. I think Dimitri was threatening to make an inspiring speech at some point.”

“That might be nice, thank you, Felix dear,” Fantine said with a smile. All three of them ignored Gustave’s pointed glower in Felix’s direction as Annette more or less pulled Felix out of the room after her.

“Eager to get to dinner, I take it?” Felix asked, clicking the door closed behind them and gently nudging Annette in the direction of the dining hall. “I told the kitchens to do something nice for dessert, so hopefully Dimitri will wait until after that to start –”

“Never mind all that, hold on,” Annette hissed at him, tearing her arm away and walking back to the parlor door.

“Um. Did you _not_ want to go to dinner?” Felix asked, following after her. “I mean, I get that, but Mercedes did say you were looking forward to –”

“Shhhhh,” Annette hissed again. She pressed her ear to the lock of the door, waving her arm at Felix wildly to get him to stop talking. He took the hint, and Annette squinted one eye closed to concentrate better on what she was hearing.

It was dead silent for the first half a minute or so. Annette was fairly certain she was only imagining the sound fabric rustling as her mother turned the dress over in her hands, but there wasn’t anything else to listen to. Then, finally, she heard her father’s voice, low and rumbly and melancholy.

“I understand if you never want to speak to me again,” he said. “I would not blame you for that at all.”

“Don’t be silly, Gustave darling, there are _many_ things I’d like to speak to you about,” came her mother’s voice, calm and steady even if it was pitched a bit higher than normal. “But you know as well as I do that our daughter listens at keyholes, so let’s wait for her to actually walk away, don’t you think?”

Annette jerked away from the door and took several steps backwards. She fumbled for Felix’s hand and pulled him away, sending one final accusatory glance back at the door, as if it had personally ratted her out.

“Let’s go let’s go let’s go,” she told him by way of an explanation.

“Hear something interesting?” he asked, his eyebrows raising slightly.

“Don’t be nosy, Felix,” Annette admonished.

“Right, my mistake,” Felix said, grabbing her hand and threading it through his arm as he easily closed the gap between them. “Won’t happen again.”

“What kind of dessert, did you say?” Annette asked as they descended a set of stairs that broadened grandly at the bottom, leading into an enormous foyer that left her feeling rather breathless.

Felix frowned. “I didn’t say. I just told them you liked chocolate things. And caramel things. And strawberry things. And mint things. So maybe some sort of strawberry-caramel-mint pastry? Would that be good?”

“You’re positively revolting and I hope you never make anyone you love a cake,” Annette said.

“I’ll give my slice to Ingrid, then,” Felix said. There wasn’t much sincerity to his threat but Annette still let out a gasp of betrayal.

“Villain,” she muttered under her breath.

She snuck a sideways glance at Felix, caught the smirk just as it disappeared back into his default frown. She was sure he’d groused all afternoon about any sort of formal dinner, but he’d put on a jacket that she’d once embarrassingly blurted out made him look ‘very handsome’ at some small post-battle celebration early in the war. She stood by the assessment now, although she rather wished she hadn’t told him so bluntly – it was shortly after the reunion and she thought it might cheer him up. It had, in fact, cheered up everyone around them _except_ Felix, who had turned bright red and left their corner table shortly after without bothering to say goodnight. Still, he hadn’t thrown it away, and Annette drew her eyes along the tailored fit and broad shoulders before landing on Felix’s face as he opened yet another door and ushered her down a corridor leading to the dining hall.

At some point in the last twenty-four hours, someone (probably Mercie) had healed the lingering remnants of his black eye. Felix now looked as if he’d never been in a fight in his life, and also as if he might challenge anyone to a fight at any minute. Mercie couldn’t fix the second one, and Annette felt a flash of guilt that she hadn’t ever quite been able to fix the first. There were smudges of dark under his eyes, a telltale sign that he’d been up all night again, and Annette imagined she was somewhat responsible for that, as well, what with her barging into his home and bringing her entire family along. Annette had felt she could actually breathe for the first time in weeks, but Felix never really looked relaxed. Annette tightened her grip on his arm, wishing she could pull him away somewhere and run her fingers through his hair and sing softly to him until he let go of all the problems she caused him and drifted off to sleep, like when she’d sung to him on the hillside, or the greenhouse. But Felix never brought up the greenhouse, and eventually he would stop bringing up her songs. She was clinging on to those memories the way she was clinging on to his arm, and she didn’t really have a right to either, or a reason to pretend she did, now that they’d left Dominic.

Felix glanced down at her, and frowned. “Everything all right?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her. “The dessert’s probably just chocolate or something, don’t worry.”

“You don’t have to escort me everywhere now, you know!” Annette blurted out, momentarily forgetting that _I’m fine_ was an option. “I mean,” she added quickly, “We don’t have to pretend to be a couple anymore.”

“Oh.” Felix dropped her arm and took a step away. “Right. Sorry, force of habit at this point, I guess.”

“I guess!” Annette said, trying out a laugh and not quite succeeding at it. “Very strange, that we can just tell the truth now, huh?”

“That’s . . . just what I was going to say,” Felix nodded. “I guess that’ll take some getting used to.” He started back down the long hallway towards the banquet hall, and Annette hurried after him. He walked slowly but the space between them still seemed unfathomable.

“I didn’t mean to– I mean, if you want. . .” Annette started hesitantly, but she jerked her head away from the conversation when she heard Mercie’s laughter, bright and musical, drifting towards them from an open doorway.

“I guess they’ve started already,” Felix said, gesturing towards the banquet hall. “You’d better think up a better excuse for being late than the fact that you were spying on your own p –”

“Don’t be evil, Felix,” Annette said with all the lonely dignity she could muster. She walked into the banquet hall with her head high to a round of loud cheers from her allies. It made it somewhat easier to ignore how much colder the room felt without Felix’s arm around her.

***

The sense of cold came and went for Annette the rest of that night. It was easy to lose track of the cold, three courses in, with Ashe’s arm slung carelessly around the back of her chair as she leaned over him to loudly ask Mercie if she wanted more wine, nearly toppling her over goblet in the process. It drifted back when she leaned in the other direction, looking towards Felix sitting at the end of the table. He seemed to spend the night morosely nodding at whatever Sylvain was saying and attempting to keep Dimitri from raising his glass to make a toast. He failed by the dessert course, which turned out to be a dazzling array of fruit tarts that Annette somehow ended up with three in front of her. And it was very hard not to feel delightfully warm, from embarrassment and delight alike, as Dimitri waved his own goblet through a stilted, heartfelt speech about how the Blue Lions truly felt whole once more now that Annette had returned to them. Annette stuffed an entire blueberry tart in her mouth to keep from crying, and Dedue subtly nudged her goblet out of her reach and replaced it with a glass of water after the toast was done.

It was cold when she got back to her room. Mercie had relocated to a newly prepared guest room – despite their protests, it seemed important to Matthew that guests were given private rooms, and Annette hated to hurt his feelings. The room suddenly seemed too big, and too empty, and Annette closed all the doors leading to other areas of the Duke’s suite, attempting to make the space feel small and secure. But the oak furniture and wood paneling and tapestries hanging on the wall somehow did more to make her feel small than the actual dimensions of the room. The fire helped somewhat, as did the stack of magic books someone had left on a table at some point that day. But she still felt small and cold, pulling the blankets over her head when the fire had burned too low to read by and silently reciting basic incantations until she lulled herself to sleep.

She woke up that morning with the opposite effect, burning up under the ridiculously heavy comforter spread over the ridiculously large bed. With some difficulty, she managed to fling the comforter onto the floor beside her, along with several of the decorative pillows surrounding her, but her attempts to fall back asleep were thwarted. It was near enough to sunrise that she decided a morning walk would suffice over sleeping in, and she eagerly slipped on one of her newly hemmed dresses and crept out onto the seemingly endless grounds of the Fraldarius castle.

Perhaps because of the warmth of her room or expectations of late spring weather, Annette overcompensated, and found herself shivering in her summer dress in the predawn light. The entire castle seemed coated in silver at this early hour, with dew sparkling on the flowers and grass in a way that strangely resembled ice. There was nothing to be done, Annette concluded, than to set a brisk pace, follow the castle wall, and hope she didn’t get lost.

She didn’t get lost, as far as she could tell, although she was still shivering twenty minutes into her walk. Perhaps that’s why the hesitant “Annette?” that echoed behind her sounded vaguely concerned. Most people were vaguely concerned about her, these days.

Annette turned towards the sound of her name and saw Dimitri walking towards, his expression matching the uncertainty in his voice. Annette gave him a big smile, and the tension seemed to drop out of his shoulders.

“I should have known you’d be out on a walk at this hour,” he said as he fell in step beside her. “I remember you used to be quite fond of a morning stroll.”

Annette gave him another smile, and she was as tentative as he had been, this time. “I am, indeed, your highness. Not much has changed,” she said. Saying nothing had changed was, of course, a lie, but a pleasant one – although he didn’t say it, Dimitri knew of Annette’s fondness for walks because he had accompanied her on almost a daily basis while at the academy. Obviously, after their return to Garreg Mach, Dimitri had not accompanied her anywhere. It felt strange and familiar to be walking with him now.

“I hope you’ve had time to rest since arriving in Fraldarius,” Dimtiri said after a few minutes of walking in silence. “I’m sure the last few weeks haven’t been easy for you.”

“People keep telling me that, highness, but I’ve never been one to rest easily,” Annette said with a sigh. She gave him a suspicious glance. “But I could say the same for you. Any particular reason you’re up practically before dawn, or just trouble sleeping?”

“Isn’t talking with you reason enough?” Dimitri asked, and when Annette’s glance remained skeptical, he sighed and looked ahead. “I’m expecting a messenger this morning, with news from the larger army. Byleth and Claude are expected to arrive tonight or tomorrow. I’m most eager to know of a more precise arrival time. Much hangs in the balance of these next few days. It is difficult to not worry.” He looked at Annette and frowned. “You’re cold,” he said, as an afterthought. It wasn't a question.

Annette could have blamed her shivers on the severity of his words, but she nodded instead. “A little,” she admitted. “I dressed for a warmer summer, I suppose.”

“Mornings always have a chill in Fraldarius. You’ll have to invest in some cloaks.” Before Annette could point out they would only be there for a few more days, Dimitri held his own cloak out towards her. “If you would like,” he added, almost shyly, and Annette stepped closer to him with a grateful smile, wrapping the end of his cloak around her shoulders and sinking into the instant warmth of the fur lining.

They lapsed into silence again as they rounded another corner of the castle, the cloak stretched between them. Uncertainty still seemed to plague Dimitri; Annette could tell from the way his hands fidgeted and the unsubtle, nervous glances he would give her every so often. They had passed many a morning walk in complete silence when they were at the academy together, and it had been pleasant, just the wind and the birds and their footsteps in mismatched rhythm. That mismatched, content rhythm seemed out of their reach, today. Annette decided that breaking the silence would be kinder, in the long run.

“Are you nervous to be king?” she asked, and immediately wished she’d spent a little more of the awkward silence thinking up a better icebreaker.

If Dimitri was surprised by the question, he didn’t show it. “I suppose I am. It’s easier to concentrate on the battle ahead, but that’s only one day of the thousands that follow after it.” He frowned, absently resting his hand on Annette’s elbow as he guided her down a side path with some very pretty cobblestones. “I fear I won’t be a very good one. I haven’t been a very good prince.”

“Don’t say that!” Annette exclaimed, recklessly grabbing at his hand. “I think – I think you’ve been the only prince I would ever bend my knee to. I’ve seen Faerghus without you, and I’m not interested.” She looked up and Dimtiri wasn’t looking at her. In fact, he seemed to be deliberately looking away. “I mean it,” she added, quietly.

“That’s very kind of you to say, Annette,” Dimitri said, his voice heavy with emotion. “I’m surprised to hear you say that at all, considering how I’ve –” he broke off here, continuing to stare at the cobblestones.

Annette squeezed his hand more tightly, and when that didn’t get a reaction, she let go of his hand and tugged rather insistently at his cloak. “I know the year hasn’t been, well, easy for any of us, Dimitri,” she said, thinking of the dark, awful winter when they fought battle after battle and Dimitri didn’t seem to see them at all. “But you’ve come such a long way – we’ve all come such a long way. I believe in the future of Fódlan, not the past. Don’t you?” She gave another tug. “Please don’t get lost in the past again, Dimitri. I’m right here. I’m listening.”

Dimiti looked at her, finally, but it was a few more breaths before he spoke. “Your kindness has been one of the only consistent things I’ve known, Annette,” he said finally, his voice rough. “I can’t believe you think I deserve such kindness now. I’m sure Felix didn’t give you a particularly kind assessment of how I’ve behaved towards your family.”

Annette ground her heels to a halt, stumbling awkwardly as Dimitri took a few steps forward and almost pulled her with him. “Towards my _family_?” she asked, her voice squeaking on the final word.

Dimitri raised an eyebrow at her, “I’m sorry, did I misspeak?” he said, concern lacing his words. “Perhaps Felix just framed it in how I treated you, specifically? That seemed to be what upset him most.”

“Felix?” Annette asked. “I’m sorry, what? Are you talking about your fight?” Dimitri and Felix’s infamous brawl was never far from her mind, but they’d arrived at a tentative enough stalemate she’d assumed they’d worked out whatever argument was between them. It didn’t make sense for Dimitri to bring it up with her.

Dimitri cast a furtive look around the walkway, which had broadened out now into a larger thoroughfare leading to the main gates of the castle. Annette couldn’t help but feel that he wasn’t checking for eavesdroppers, but was in fact looking for someone to rescue him from continuing this conversation.

“Yes?” he finally answered, uncertain. “I assume he told you I was responsible for his arm injury, you don’t seem the type to heal him and not query the source.”

Annette had played Felix’s angry, sparse comments about the injury in her head a dozen times. She had plenty of theories for what they argued about – about the army, about Felix’s father, about Faerghus. She’d never included _herself_ on the list.

“He said it was something . . . he said it was personal,” she mumbled, more to herself than to Dimitri. She looked up at him. “He said it didn’t have anything to do with – that it was just about something between the two of you.”

Dimitri gave her a look of absolute panic. In an army full of terrible liars, he was the worst of all at maintaining a neutral expression. “Oh,” he said, his voice cracking. “”Oh no. I – I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Annette grabbed his hand again. “Dimitri, please tell me. Tell me what you fought about,” she begged.

Dimitri gave another wild look around the courtyard. “That _really_ seems like something you should talk to Felix about,” he said, flinching away from her.

“But he won’t tell me!” Annette practically yelled, and it was her turn to check their surroundings, but they were still alone. “He won’t tell me anything,” she added, not hiding the dejection in her voice. It might work to her advantage.

It certainly succeeded in making Dimitri uncomfortable. “Yes. . .he does seem reticent to talk about, um. Important things,” he stumbled, clearly trying to say something comforting. Annette looked at him with her best puppy dog eyes, but he set his mouth in a line and straightened up. “Still, it’s not my place,” he said firmly. “And Felix does need to . . . talk to you.”

“Dimitri,” Annette said, with one last desperate plea.

Dimitri sighed, but spoke gently. “Please Annette. I can’t.”

Annette looked down, but nodded, solemnly. “I understand,” she said. “I’ll talk to him myself, then.” She let Dimitri lead her silently back towards the castle gates, her mind moving at a thousand miles an hour. Her restless thoughts were interrupted, however, by the screech of a wyvern and the unmistakable flap of wings above them, and both Annette and Dimitri looked up to see an Alliance messenger swooping above them.

“I thought your messenger came from Garreg Mach,” Annette said as it swooped out of sight to the other side of the palace, where the stables were kept. Dimitri’s grip tightened on her arm.

“From our army, yes – but Claude promised he’d send his fastest messenger, once he knew. That must mean they’ve already started their journey this morning. I must – I should tell – I need to,” he trailed off and gave Annette a sheepish smile, too caught up in excitement to finish a sentence.

Annette smiled and nodded. “You’d best hurry to speak with him. I’m sure the message is important.”

“Then, I suppose this is where I leave you,” Dimitri said, stepping away from Annette and adjusting his cloak back around him once more. He looked down at her with such fondness that Annette had the distinct impression he wanted to pat her on the top of her head. She avoided a scowl – it was a baseless insinuation, after all – and managed a slight curtsy.

“So it is, Highness,” she said with a final smile. “I wish you a productive morning.”

She had plans for the same.

***

Annette knew what she was going to do was wrong. She knew it exploited dear friendships and preyed on long-established weaknesses. She knew she had promised the goddess in countless prayers and as countless bargaining chips that she would be better in the future.

She just didn’t care.

“I can’t believe the kitchens were just going to throw these away,” Ingrid said. She picked up another biscuit and gave a sideways glance at Annette, almost as if she were asking for permission, before biting into it.

“I know, that’s what _I_ said. They’re only a day old!” Annette exclaimed. She had found the pastry chef earlier that morning, complimented her profusely on the fruit tarts from last night’s meal, and begged if she could make something, anything, for her to take to tea that afternoon. “More chamomile?” she asked sweetly, refilling Ingrid’s teacup before she could reply.

“Matthew must be trying to put his best foot forward; he always was a stickler for propriety,“ Ingrid mused, picking up the teacup with her other hand and taking a sip. “Or maybe Felix has finally gotten it into his head that he needs to learn to host, and he’s just gone overboard.”

“He must be really happy to see you again,” Annette said. She refilled her own cup of tea and took a small sip. It was far too hot to drink, still.

Ingrid shrugged. “In his own Felix way, I guess. He probably is.”

Annette swallowed her tea a little too quickly. “I was so surprised when I heard that he’d left Garreg Mach,” she said, suppressing a cough as the tea scalded the back of her throat. “He’s so close with you and Sylvain and everyone, it must have been something really serious to make him leave.”

“Well, I mean – it was?” Ingrid gave Annette a confused look, and suddenly seemed to not know what to do with her hands. “He only left to go – well, to help you out, you know? I personally thought the whole engagement angle was stupid, that was Sylvain’s idea, I think. I advocated for burning the front gate down but no one liked that suggestion much. But it worked out in the long run, right?” She paused and seemed to realize what she had just said. “I mean, I guess it worked out? Or it’s working out? I don’t know, it’s probably better than fire!” She crammed the rest of her biscuit into her mouth, which freed up one of her hands to awkwardly play with the silverware in front of her.

Annette imagined that Ingrid would rather talk about anything other than whether Felix’s engagement was working out in the long run. She decided this could only be used to her advantage.

“The thing is, Ingrid, I heard he left because he got into a fight with Dimitri,” Annette said, quickly changing the course of conversation. “Which was before the whole engagement plan was hatched, right?”

Ingrid looked relieved for a new topic of conversation for a moment, but then her eyes narrowed, ever so slightly. Annette grabbed her teacup and tried to sip tea in an innocent manner. “I mean, technically that did happen first, yeah,” she said. “But I wouldn’t say it was the _primary_ reason he left.”

“Oh, it wasn't?” Annette asked, widening her eyes as much as possible. “I must’ve really misunderstood! What did they argue about, then? I heard it was in a war council, so I’m sure you overheard it.”

“Everyone overheard it,” Ingrid muttered darkly. “It wasn’t exactly whispered.” Her eyes were well and truly narrowed now. “I assume Felix told you about it? He probably was crueler in his explanation than Dimitri deserved but I guess –”

“Oh no, I just heard the rumor from my uncle’s spymaster,” Annette said. She gave Ingrid the saddest look she could muster. “Nobody tells me anything,” she added.

Ingrid shifted in her seat awkwardly. “I’m sure if you ask Felix, he’d be able to give you a fairer explanation than I can,” she started.

“Dimitri said the argument was about me,” Annette cut in, putting her teacup down and leaning forward. “Is that true?”

“They weren’t actually going to throw out these biscuits, were they?” Ingrid asked. There was a staring contest for about five seconds, but Annette broke easily.

“Okay, _fine_ , I lied about the biscuits,” she said. “You _have_ to tell me what they argued about, Ingrid. Felix dodges all my questions, Dimitri just says to talk to Felix. I’m so tired of being the last to know anything, or people trying to protect me, or people hiding things from me when they’re _about_ me.”

“Please stop looking at me like that; I know you’re just – ughhh,” Ingrid concluded articulately, slamming her teacup down. “Can’t you just ask _Felix_ to explain himself?”

“If I ask Felix, he’ll say no, and it will break my heart,” Annette explained calmly. “It will break my heart, and I’ll lie on the floor crying until I die, and everyone will say at my funeral how you could have solved things but didn’t.”

“None of that makes any sense at all,” Ingrid pointed out.

“Please, Ingrid. I’ll never ask a favor of you again, _ever_ ,” Annette said. She could see Ingrid wavering, so she played her strongest card and hoped for the best. “Felix had his chance to explain himself, don’t you think? Are you really going to cover for him _again_?” she asked, letting a note of annoyance creep into her voice.

She could practically see Ingrid tallying the times she’d covered for Felix over the years, when he’d miss class and pick fights and insult people who could potentially make his life very miserable indeed. Annette reached for the teapot and picked it up with both hands.

“More chamomile?” she asked. 

***

Annette ate so many biscuits at tea that she didn’t mind skipping dinner too much. At any rate, she wasn’t hungry. She sat nervously on the loveseat in front of the fireplace in her suite, trying to read about innovations in 9th century battle magic technique and failing to absorb any information to the point that she was probably less knowledgeable than when she’d started. The flaw with her plan, she realized, was that it involved waiting, and she was very impatient.

Thirty minutes after sundown, there was a knock at her door.

The upside to this plan, Annette thought, closing her book and leaving it on the table as she walked to the door, was that Felix was also very impatient.

Felix blinked down at her as she opened the door, his hair falling into his eyes. Annette sternly reminded herself that she was not going to think about his eyes, or his hair, because she was extremely mad at him at the moment.

“Felix!” she said brightly. “Come in, please.”

“Is everything alright? Matthew said you were looking for me,” he said, walking in and casting a curious look around the room, although he’d surely seen it hundreds of times before. “I looked for you at dinner,” he added, sounding almost worried.

Annette clicked the door closed behind her and turned to face Felix. “Why did you punch Dimitri in the middle of a war council two months ago?” she asked, leaning against the door and staring up at him.

Felix visibly flinched at this, but recovered his frown quickly enough. “This is why you wanted to see me?”

“And don't say it’s because he refused to duel you properly,” Annette added. “Or I’ll just ask why you _challenged him to a duel_ in the middle of a war council.”

Felix’s face darkened. “He deserved it,” he muttered.

“Are you going to tell me why?” Annette repeated, stubbornly sticking to her line of questioning. “Because I'm having trouble thinking of anything that deserves such _blatant disrespect_ toward the crown prince and army leader –”

“Don't you start with that, too, I get enough from that from Ingrid, and Ashe, and my fa –” Felix cut off with a growl of frustration, and if Annette had been in a kinder place she might have relented. She did not relent.

“Was it, in fact, because he wouldn’t lend you the entire kingdom army for your personal use, and you threw a temper tantrum about it?” she demanded. Felix had been retreating further away from her as this conversation progressed, and she marched forward, poking him in the chest to accentuate her words. “Was that it, Felix?”

“Personal use – is that what you want to call it?” Felix snapped, glaring down at her. “We hadn’t seen you for _weeks_ , you could’ve been getting tortured in some dungeon somewhere for all he knew – or cared –”

“You can’t just punch the king of Faerghus because he doesn’t do what you want, Felix!” Annette yelled.

“He’s not king yet!” Felix yelled back.

“That doesn’t _matter_ ,” Annette said, exasperated, and Felix’s face crumpled as he looked down at her.

“He said – he said we had to focus on matters of importance. He said you weren’t _important_ , after all you’d done for him,” Felix said, his voice rough and desperate. “How can you stand here and defend him?”

“Because he was right,” Annette said. She could feel tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, but she pushed them away. “He has a whole kingdom to worry about. He has a whole _continent_ to worry about. The life of one mage who made a mistake doesn’t –”

“Don’t,” Felix whispered. “Don’t say that.”

“I just don’t understand,” Annette said, looking away, unable to meet his eyes when he was looking at her like it hurt him to do so. “How you can watch him drift so far away from us, and act like nothing matters but revenge, and forswear Faerghus and his friends and your family and everything that matters, for _months_ – and when we finally get him back, when he finally starts to care about us again, _that’s_ when you snap? Over nothing? It doesn’t make sense, Felix!”

“Because it wasn’t over nothing,” Felix said sharply, his eyes flashing angrily. “Because it was _you_.”

“I’m not worth destroying the future of this country over.”

“Don’t _say_ that,” Felix said, louder this time, more desperately.

“It was my mistake; it was my family. It had nothing to do with you,” Annette said, jabbing her finger against Felix’s chest again.

Felix caught her hand and pulled it away, but dropped it quickly, stepping back and turning away. “I don’t care,” he said. “I'm not sorry. I’d do it again.”

“Why, Felix?” Annette asked, one more time, following after him further into the room. She grabbed at his arm. “Why would you ruin everything we’ve worked for? Why would you hurt your standing, your future? And for nothing!”

Felix spun around, grabbing her wrist. Annette stumbled closer and for once he didn’t step away.

“Because I’m in love with you,” he burst out, and the room suddenly became too hot and too cold all at the same time.


	22. Felix Makes a Promise

Felix regretted everything immediately.

He dropped Annette’s wrist and stumbled back, unable to look away but for once desperate to retreat. The wood paneling and family tapestries seemed to be closing in around him. And Annette – blunt, brilliant, perfect Annette – stared up at him with wide, shocked eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a low, trembling voice. “Can you say that again?”

Felix had told countless lies to himself since arriving in Dominic. He was just here for a mission. He was in the right place at the right time and Byleth needed him for this. It didn’t matter that it was Annette. They were friends. They were allies. He didn’t want anything beyond that.

They were comforting lies, tiny and meaningless. If he didn’t really believe them, there was something helpful about repeating them to himself. But he realized, as Annette blinked up at him, tears at the corners of her eyes, that every lie he’d told himself, he’d also told her. And nothing about Annette was meaningless.

“I’m in love with you,” he repeated, his voice rough and cracking and barely his own. “I’m in love with you and I’ve always been in love with you and I’m _sorry_ and I never meant for things to get –”

Annette grabbed him by the collar and kissed him.

It was clumsy and desperate and it took her a couple of tries before her lips finally found his. Felix’s knees locked and his shoulders tensed and he forgot to close his eyes and he definitely, absolutely could not breathe. His hands all but flailed, indecisive, moving from Annette’s back to her shoulders to her waist without ever landing anywhere permanent. Annette, for her part, pulled him down closer to her with a surprising amount of force, or maybe just tenacity, falling against him as she pressed her lips against his with a decisiveness that Felix found both reassuring and utterly confusing. 

Annette pulled away far too soon, well before Felix had figured out what to do with his hands or any of the rest of him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t – is this what you wanted?” she asked, and she looked so anxious and Felix couldn’t understand why she would look so anxious. He blindly grabbed her, pulling her closer to him before she could stumble back out of his reach.

“Very much,” he said, his voice slightly dazed. “Sorry, but – are we still fighting right now?”

“Oh right, I was supposed to be mad at you,” Annette said, sounding almost as dazed as he was. She bit her lip and pulled away to look up at him. “Well, I still think you should apologize to Dimitri, or at least talk to him. I still don’t think it was worth starting a brawl during a war council over me –”

Felix leaned down and rested his forehead against hers. “I’ll try the first if you never say the second again,” he murmured. “I’d start a thousand brawls in a thousand war councils over you.”

Annette scrunched her nose up. “Is that supposed to be romantic?” she asked. But she reached up and brushed her fingers across his jaw before he could pull away. Her expression hesitant, she moved her hand to cup his cheek more fully, and Felix felt himself leaning into it, desperate for her touch.

“It wanted it to be real,” she all but whispered. “Every time you looked at me, every time you touched me. I wanted it to be real so badly, and I felt so selfish, to want more when you’d already –”

Felix moved his hand to tilt Annette’s chin up towards him and kissed her again.

He had kissed her before, of course – he had something of an encyclopedic memory for the times he’d kissed her before. But those kisses, when they weren’t perfunctory, had always seemed somehow urgent. Even if they weren’t hurried – and often they were – it always felt as if it were the last time he was ever going to kiss Annette again.

Annette threw her arms around him with a contented hum, and Felix realized he rather liked feeling as if he would kiss Annette tonight, and tomorrow, and every day for the rest of his life. He brushed her hair out of her eyes with one hand, and let his fingers linger along the ends of her curls, and the world seemed to slow down and sharpen focus all at the same time.

But Annette was eager where Felix was careful and insistent where he was hesitant. Her sighs and laughter and gasps were practically songs, and when she pulled Felix deeper into the room, he followed after her greedily. All of Felix’s carefully constructed confidence crumbled as Annette wrapped her arms around him and pulled him closer, trembling and laughing against him, and he was lost and he was fumbling and he had never been happier. And when Annette tripped, against the edge of her dress or the edge of a rug or nothing at all, she took him with her as she fell, just like he’d always suspected she would.

They collapsed into a pile of pillows and blankets and quilts that Felix was almost certain had at one time belonged on top of the bed rather than on the floor. Annette, evidently used to tripping and falling, managed to maintain her grip on Felix’s shoulder and seemed relatively unfazed beyond taking a moment to throw her head back against a pillow and laugh. Felix chased after that laugh until he was kissing her again, soft and slow and sweet, with Annette letting go of his shoulders to bury her fingers in his hair. He couldn’t remember when it had fallen loose.

She pulled back, abruptly, tugging the roots of Felix’s hair away from her with just enough force that he flinched. “You said you didn’t love me,” she said, accusingly, frowning up at him suddenly.

“I didn’t say that. I wouldn’t say that.” Felix’s voice sounded far away even to his own ears, and he wasn’t entirely sure exactly what he was saying, except that he knew it was true.

“You did,” she insisted, and her voice was so hurt that Felix reached down and cupped her cheek gently. She leaned into him. “You told my father – you said we were – we weren’t anything.” She trailed off a Felix leaned over her, precariously balanced on one elbow.

“I didn’t think we _were_. I didn’t think you cared,” he murmured, and Annette shivered beneath him as he leaned down to kiss her forehead. He pulled away suddenly, too, then, remembering their last conversation on the matter. “You said you just wanted to be friends!” he pointed out, trying unsuccessfully to match her previous glare, which had melted away into something much more affectionate.

“I did want to be friends,” she said, her eyes wide and searching and so blue that Felix could barely breathe. “Something is better than nothing, isn’t it?” She struggled up onto her elbows and Felix regretfully sat back on his heels to give her space. “I wanted anything that I could get, that’s why I felt so – so selfish.”

Felix reached his hand out and pulled her up so she was sitting next to him. “So what do you want now?” he asked. He brushed her hair behind her ears, which did nothing to tame its wild frizzing, and followed his hand, pressing a kiss against her temple. “Be specific,” he added softly, and Annette gripped his arm a little too tightly in response.

She leaned back and looked at him solemnly, quiet for a few seconds, and it was just long enough for Felix to wonder if he’d said something wrong when she finally spoke. “I think,” she said slowly. “I want you to tell me you love me again. And then I want you to kiss me again.”

Felix obliged.

He honestly didn’t know if it was minutes later or hours later when they broke apart again, Annette gasping for a breath in a way that sent a jolt down his spine. She leaned her head against his chest and traced a hand down his opposite arm until she found his hand and interlocked their fingers. Felix noticed she was trembling still, slightly, and wrapped a hand around her waist, protecting her from absolutely nothing but wanting to protect her all the same. He realized, in the back of his mind, that the edge of the rug was digging into his shoulder blade uncomfortably, as he lay halfway on the ostentatious carpet and halfway on the hardwood floor.

“Why are we on the floor right now when there’s a perfectly functional bed right next to us?” he asked, gesturing vaguely with the hand entangled in Annette’s but letting his arm flop back against the ground without much resistance. “Also, why are all your blankets on the floor?”

Annette glanced at the blankets, and the bed, and Felix, and blinked slowly, clearly trying to think of an answer. “I was too hot or too cold or something. I couldn’t sleep. I can’t remember,” she said.

“Which are you right now?” Felix asked, drawing his arm closer around her waist and tugging at the shoulder of her dress with his other hand. “I’ll fix it.”

“Villain,” Annette mumbled, squirming in his grasp without much intention of actually moving. She rested her head against his chest again, but craned her neck towards his face. “I love you. You know that, right?” she said softly.

Felix reached up to stroke her hair, keeping his eyes fixed firmly on the ceiling. “Starting to figure that out, yeah,” he replied.

It felt strange to smile as he said it.

He felt, more than saw, Annette shifting to snuggle closer against him, turning her head so that he became a properly comfortable pillow. “Let’s just stay like this forever,” she suggested, her voice almost drowsy in contentment.

“Okay,” Felix mumbled. He ran his fingers through her hair and down her neck, lightly tracing the back of her spine.

He’d barely gotten past her shoulders when a horn sounded loudly outside. The long note bounced through the window and off the walls, seeming to mock Felix personally with its terrible timing. Felix closed his eyes and groaned slightly, trying to decide how far he could fake selective hearing.

Annette, however, was uninterested in pretending. She shot straight up, twisting towards the window, using Felix’s sternum as extremely uncomfortable leverage to push herself up.

“That's not – that’s a friendly signal, isn’t it?” she said, her voice laced with a mix of excitement and fear. “Cornelia wouldn’t have followed us here, not with Fhirdiad –”

“No,” Felix groaned, neither excited nor afraid. “That’s definitely just Claude and company.”

“‘And company’ meaning the _professor_ , right?” Annette said excitedly. She was on her feet now, and she offered a hand to Felix, yanking him to his feet and dragging him to the giant double window. “The professor and the rest of the army?”

“So they tell me,” Felix said. Dimitri had gone over the arrival of the troops with anxious precision for far too long that afternoon, but the details had understandably slipped Felix’s mind in the past hour or so. Annette yanked the curtains open wider and leaned out the window. Felix snaked his arms around her waist, rested his chin on her head, and did his best to keep from slamming the curtains shut again.

The front gates had been thrown open, and the army was already streaming in, led by Byleth with Claude by her side – or at least, by her side and above her by about 20 feet. His wyvern drew lazy circles through the sky as he landed in the main courtyard, where Dimitri was waiting already.

“It’s bigger than I remember,” Annette murmured, leaning back against Felix. “Did we get more troops?”

“I think Claude managed to scrounge up a few battalions from the Alliance, although they’ve been pretty devastated by the war, themselves,” Felix said with a frown that Annette couldn’t see. “It might just be that our army looks grander from this high up. Or maybe you’re just sentimental.”

“I am _not_ , Felix,” Annette protested, twisting around to glare up at him. Felix reached down to wipe a tear away from her corner of her cheek. “It’s not my fault you don’t have any proper feelings!” she added defensively, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Not a one,” Felix agreed. He caught her hand and pulled it up to his lips, kissing her knuckles. “They’ll be glad to see you, too,” he added softly, and Annette beamed up at him despite her tears.

“Do you have to go talk to them? It’s your territory,” she said, casting one final glance out the window, where Byleth was pulling Claude off Dimitri in an attempt to greet him herself.

“Ugh. I guess,” Felix said reluctantly. He gave the pillow-less bed one last, longing look that Annette did not miss, judging by the indignant way she swatted at his arm.

“Let’s go, then,” Annette sang, not quite tripping over her dress as she rushed to the door.

Felix caught her just before she reached for the doorknob, and he awkwardly did his best to lace up the back of her dress more securely. Annette stifled a giggle as she turned to haphazardly straighten his collar. If Felix managed to steal one last kiss before Annette pushed him out the door, no one would notice them blushing any harder than they already were.

They rushed out of the duke’s quarters and into the maze of corridors and staircases that Felix knew like the back of his hand. Annette, to her credit, was starting to remember the directions to get from her bedroom to the main spaces of the castle, but Felix still found himself grabbing her elbow or crashing into her when she guessed a turn wrong. When they finally reached the top stairs of the entry hall, Felix was still holding Annette’s arm after a particularly disastrous guess had sent her flailing into him.

Claude, standing in the entry hall chatting with Dimitri and Byleth and Matthew, was the first to see them. His eyes flicked to Annette with the same calculating intensity he always carried with him, taking them both in for a few seconds. Then he looked at Felix and gave him a smile that would’ve seemed congratulatory if it hadn’t been so damn smug.

“There’s the master of the house!” he sang out cheerfully, detaching himself from the group and walking toward Felix and Annette with his arms open wide, as if they were the oldest of friends. “We were wondering where you had disappeared to – our arrival is rather late, I fear. I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“The boar informed me of your arrival this morning; I’m not so forgetful as to sleep through it,” Felix said flatly. Annette dug her elbow into his ribs and Claude’s smile faded ever so slightly, but they both managed to remain cordial despite their joint disapproval.

“Well, of course,” Claude said, his eyes glinting but not smiling. “But I’m sure being a duke has its share of distractions.” He turned to Annette and took her hand, kissing her knuckles with a bow that was perfect in its courtesy. “Duchess Fraldarius, it’s been too long. I hope I can call you Annette without offense.”

“Good evening, Claude,” Annette said, her voice remarkably level. Felix couldn’t understand how she managed to be so polite to everyone. “I trust your journey here was a safe one?”

“Perfectly marvelous. It’s so nice to travel with an army when I’m _not_ in charge of sorting out infighting between five separate factions,” Claude said cheerfully. “I’m so glad to see you’re settling into Fraldarius territory so comfortably,” he added with a wink. Felix’s hand went to a sword that wasn’t at his side and Annette’s hands went to her hair to try to smooth it into some semblance of order, but neither had time to reply before the rest of the group joined them.

“I’m glad to see you’re well, Annette,” Byleth said. “I missed you.” She offered nothing more than a slight nod of her head, but Felix could see Annette’s fingers twitching as she bounced on the balls of her feet, clearing trying to keep herself from flinging forward and hugging her favorite and most treasured mentor.

“The troops are getting settled for the night, Felix, and I’ve already spoken to your stablehand,” Dimitri said. “I wanted to speak with you about a few things before the war council tomorrow, and Matthew says he has some questions for you –”

“Nothing major, your grace,” Matthew said, once he realized Dimitri was pausing to give him an opening. “There’s the matter of breakfast tomorrow, and I want to confirm the meeting room for the war council, as there are several to choose from and your late father had strong opinion on which were best for particular contexts. There’s also the matter of night shifts for Fraldarius guards, given the new troop configuration –” 

“Of course, Matthew, there’s much to do,” Felix said, not waiting for the same opening, for fear that the list would never stop. He turned to Annette. “If you wouldn’t mind going with Matthew to go over these details, Annette, I’m sure he’d be willing to catch you up on standards.”

Annette blinked up at him in surprise, and Felix didn’t deign to catch the expressions of those around them. “Right! Of course,” she said, her voice gaining more certainty as she broke away from him and hopped down the final step, walking over to Matthew. “So, Matthew, explain to me why new troops would change an existing guard order?” she asked, taking some of his papers out of his hands as they walked away together.

“It doesn’t have to, your grace, but the guards are wondering if they’ll be paired with the new troops, and I just need confirmation before I give them an answer,” Matthew explained, and their voices faded into a blur of Annette’s sharp questions and Matthew’s calm, extensive answers as they disappeared down a corridor and out of sight.

Felix stared after them for perhaps too long, but drew his eyes away at the prickly, eerie feeling of being studied. He wasn’t surprised to see Byleth’s intense green eyes gazing at him – he’d known her long enough to know she looked at everyone this way, but not long enough to be quite comfortable with the scrutiny.

“You have a very competent steward,” she remarked simply. “I’m glad. Annette never could stand things to be done halfway.”

“I’m surprised to see you so soon after we parted last,” Felix said, uninterested in contradicting her but equally uninterested in continuing her proposed conversation. “I thought it would take longer to unite the Alliance and Kingdom armies enough to mount an attack.”

“As did I, but Claude was able to provide some very capable personnel,” Byleth said thoughtfully. “Remember Hilda? From Golden Deer? Claude might have mentioned her when we last met.”

Felix wrinkled his nose. “A capable Hilda? No.”

Byleth shrugged. “Competence comes in many forms, Felix. But I'm as surprised as you.” She allowed herself a small smile, which always caught Felix off guard. “Her organizational abilities are actually _quite_ enviable. I'm very pleased she’s working with us.”

“Is she here tonight?” Felix asked, looking around.

“Hilda? Absolutely not,” Claude cut in, and Felix wasn’t sure how much of the conversation he’d been listening to – he’d certainly seemed utterly engrossed in his conversation with Dimitri only moments before. Claude continued, “She’s worried the stone pathways of Fhirdiad will aggravate an ankle injury she evidently got last week. Tragic, really. I don’t know how she got it. She’ll keep an eye on Garreg Mach for us, though. She really does know how to keep a place running.”

“I hope she recovers soon,” Dimitri said, and Felix looked at him in shock when he realized he was being sincere. “I’m sure that’s very painful for her.”

“Painful that we left her in charge of things, more like,” Claude said with an unrepentant shrug. He glanced over at Felix. “Speaking of, can we get this mini council underway? I’m sure we’d all like to be asleep, or doing any other number of pleasant things, but I would like to make sure we’re all on the same page.”

Felix found an unoccupied sitting room without much fuss, and they settled around a low table, Byleth magically lighting a fire as she briefly paused by the fireplace beside them. They didn’t have a map for the moment, but Felix assured them there would be plenty on hand by tomorrow’s meeting.

“Claude did excellent work compiling our various information channels,” Byleth said, leaning forward to rest her elbows on her knees. Claude flashed Felix a victorious smile that Felix did not bother to return. “We have little chance of catching Cornelia in an ambush – it seems she’s been preparing for our arrival.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t exactly call our escape subtle,” Felix muttered. “She might not know the extent of the army, but she knows someone’s coming after her.”

“And I would argue she knows the extent of the army,” Byleth said, frowning. “Either that, or she’s _remarkably_ eager to kill you.”

“Entirely possible,” Felix muttered.

“The point is, she’s neglecting all other regions, pulling troops back to Fhridiad, concentrating forces in the city.” Byleth frowned. “This won’t be an easy battle.”

“If we’re marching directly into the city, a three pronged attack seems the best strategy,” Dimitri said. He glanced at Claude. “You haven’t seen the capital yet. The way it's designed makes a frontal assault appear easy enough, but it would be better to –”

“Circle around the side streets and try to flank them from the back, yes,” Felix agreed, frowning slightly as he tried to visualize the markets and businesses of Fhirdiad as a field of war. “If you set Sylvain and Ingrid leading a faction down one side, I can take Annette and some battalions and take another side. That frees you up for a central charge.”

He looked up at three faces, each registering silent, unspoken concern differently – Byleth’s face completely blank, Claude’s already beginning to size Felix up for a reaction, Dimitri looking as if he’d somehow been caught doing something wrong.

“What?” Felix asked.

“That was something we wanted to talk to you about,” Byleth said quietly. “How would you describe Annette’s relationship to her uncle, Felix? You’ve seen them interact.”

Felix wrinkled his nose. “Baron Dominic?” he paused, trying and failing to read the meaning behind the three pairs of eyes boring into him. “I mean, on one hand he treats her like a daughter, but on the other hand he did kidnap her and trap her in a castle for two months. The last time I saw him he _did_ try to kill me, but no one in the family thinks he was trying very hard. But Annette did seem pretty mad about it, all the same.” Felix shrugged. “Typical Fódlan family, I guess.”

“I – hm, I see,” Byleth said, casting a sharp glance at Dimitri, who nodded sagely to confirm that this seemed like an accurate report. She continued, “And what were the troops like in Dominic, while you were there? A strong contingent?”

“Not at all,” Felix said bluntly. “Half of them are practically boys, scarcely out of training – their resources are strained from the war, but I don’t think either the Empire or the so-called Dukedom is providing resources to protect the territory from local bandits and uprisings. And – it’s possible Annette and her mother hit some of their best men with pretty nasty spells on our way out of town. Also maybe Ingrid stabbed one of them. So they might be down a few men while they recover from that.” He frowned. “It’s a bad situation, over there. But I don’t see what that has to do with Fhirdiad. Surely we’re not seeking a battle on the western front.”

“Of course not,” Dimitri said hastily. There was a pause before he realized that his cutting in meant everyone expected him to answer Felix’s question. “The thing is, Felix, Claude received a report that Baron Dominic travels with Cornelia, and has brought his army to Fhirdiad with him. We’re not sure the strength of that battalion, but – well, Annette’s been through so much. To ask her to face her uncle at a time like this –”

“You don’t trust her?” Felix snapped, feeling his entire body go tense at the suggestion.

“No, we’re just not _monsters_ , Fraldarius,” Claude snapped, suddenly sharp and precise as the air in the room changed. “You said this guy was like a father to her. You really think she wants to fight her own family?”

Felix glared at Claude, but tried to steady his breathing. Byleth, as usual, served as a strangely calming presence against the tensions in the room, even when she didn’t say anything at all.

“Here’s what I think,” Felix said finally. “I think if you don’t let Annette come with us to Fhirdiad, she’ll find a way to sneak on to the front lines, anyway. And then you’ll have a rogue mage wandering through the streets of Fhirdiad, and that’ll just make my job that much harder.”

“What’s your job, then?” Claude asked. “Leading the left flank?”

“Protecting Annette, first and foremost,” Felix said sharply. “But also, cutting Cornelia down where she stands.”

The words came out viscous and bitter, and Claude blinked at him in surprise, caught off guard for once. But his blank stare quickly turned into a wicked smile. “I can get behind those goals,” he said, with enough edge to his amiable tone that Felix for once believed him.

“We want Annette and Gustave with us on the front lines,” Byleth cut in, finally, staring at Felix unblinkingly. “We don’t have such an advantage to believe we can win without them. But such matters have to be treated with delicacy. You can’t just ask a man to kill his brother.”

“I’ll tell her,” Felix said. “Gustave will do anything the boar asks him, and the only thing I can say with certainty about Annette is she won’t be left behind again. But they should know. Someone should warn them, even if we don’t tell the entire damn army tomorrow.”

“I suspected this would be your answer,” Byleth said, her tone enigmatic as ever. “Dimitri, you can inform Sir Gilbert of the situation. I’ll talk to Annette.”

“I don’t mind talking to –” Felix started, but he cut off as Byleth’s eyes swiveled back to him.

“You’ve been an excellent emissary, but no,” Byleth said with a sense of finality. “I’d like to speak to Annette directly, on this.” She gave him a small smile, which was rare. “I’ll confess, I’ve missed our chats.”

Felix relented. “I guess I can’t blame you for that. Just – be kind,” he concluded rather unimpressively. He ignored the irony of him lecturing anyone about kindness.

If Byleth found his advice amusing, she didn’t show it. “Do we have a sense of the best time to leave Fraldarius?” she asked Dimitri. And the conversation moved away from Dominic, even as Felix’s thoughts stayed behind there.

***

Matthew had his own office; it had belonged to him as long as Felix could remember. When Felix staggered out of Byleth’s impromptu war council, his head slightly aching from the sheer amount of information he’d had to go over, he headed to Matthew’s office first.

He wasn’t so selfish that he hoped Annette would still be there – surely meeting room arrangements and last-minute confirmations could be done in under an hour, and she deserved to rest, even if the castle was in chaos that evening. But he was selfish enough that his heart skipped when he pushed the door open and heard her voice, and he was selfish enough to smile to see her, furiously studying a set of documents on the desk between her and Matthew.

“They aren’t in season, is the only thing, Matthew,” she said, frowning, but her voice gentle. “Surely there’s a dish we can make at less expense.”

“Several, your grace, we have several options that would be more simple,” Matthew said, writing furiously as Annette spoke. “I just thought, with the prince in residence, we should attempt something a little more impressive.”

“Oh, Dimitri eats anything, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Annette said cheerfully, and Felix remembered suddenly Annette’s tendency, during the academy, to memorize people’s favorite meals and snacks, as if that were knowledge that would certainly secure their friendship. “It just seems, in wartime, we want to be frugal – perhaps a fish dish? We’ve close enough to the sea that the prices on a daily catch must be –”

“Please tell me you aren’t still discussing tomorrow’s breakfast,” Felix cut in, leaning against the doorframe. At this rate, he realized, they’d never notice him until he spoke up.

Matthew and Annette turned towards his voice. And Annette smiled at him, and the world turned upside down and fell into its proper place all at the same time. Felix tried to subtly grab the doorknob behind him, for balance.

“Not exactly. Um . . . we’re on to dinner,” Annette said, looking down at the paperwork and giggling suddenly. “I guess we got a little carried away!” she said. “And it’s too dark to take proper inventory of the training grounds, so meals seemed like an easier discussion.”

“Matthew, Fraldarius would truly be lost without you,” Felix said solemnly. “But would you please let her ladyship go to bed?”

“Matthew wasn’t keeping me!” Annette protested before Matthew could answer. “I wanted to help.”

“Well then, Annette, would you please let Matthew go to bed?” Felix asked with a raised eyebrow. “I’m deeply worried for you both, now that you’ve met each other.”

Annette scowled at him momentarily, but melted back into a smile when Felix held out his hand to her solemnly. She hurriedly shuffled her papers together and pushed them back to Matthew with a polite nod. “We can keep working on details, Matthew, don’t worry. Overall the weekly outline looks marvelous.”

“Of course, your grace,” said Matthew, and Felix could have sworn he returned her smile, slightly, but he couldn’t be sure, as he had absolutely no recollection of Matthew smiling before. He lost his chance and his interest to investigate further as Annette grabbed his hand, beaming up at him as she pulled him out the door with a final sung _goodnight_ to Matthew, who was still, maybe, smiling. 

“You’re going to work that poor man to death,” Felix chided as he slid his arm around Annette’s waist, gently pulling her closer as she tried her first wrong turn for the evening.

“He started it,” Annette said cheerfully, barely coming down from the euphoria of solving problems. She smiled up at him as they took to their first flight of stairs. “How was the war council? Are we going to win?”

“Of course we are; I don’t lose,” Felix said, but he had trouble keeping eye contact as he said it. He looked away, his eyes absently running down a tapestry with his family Crest, his brain drifting to whom they would have to fight and what might become of Dominic.

“Hey.” Felix felt a tug on his sleeve and looked down into Annette’s eyes, wide and searching. “Everything okay?” she asked with a nervous smile.

“Yeah. No.” Felix frowned. He tried again. “Byleth wants to talk to you tomorrow,” he offered.

Annette’s eyes grew even bigger, if such a thing was possible. “Am I in trou –” she started, still somewhat stuck on old habits from school days. She also tried again. “What about?” she asked.

Felix paused for a moment. Byleth had told him she wanted to talk to Annette herself. She’d never said he _shouldn’t_ talk to her.

Not that he cared.

“There’s reports of Gérald in Fhirdiad, assisting Cornelia’s army,” he said, trying to keep his voice level. Just another routine report. “I think she wants to talk to you about him.”

“Oh, Felix,” Annette said softly, leaning into him more as they left the last flight of steps behind them. “I had really hoped – oh, goddess.”

“They’ll let you stay behind, if you want,” Felix said quickly. He found he once more did not know what to do with his hands – a traditional arm for support seemed woefully inadequate at the moment. “They wouldn’t make you fight – he’s your family; Byleth knows that.”

Annette frowned. “He kidnapped me and held me hostage for two months. He threw my father in a dungeon cell and wouldn’t let me see my mother. He tried to murder you in front of me mere hours after we were married.”

“All of that is true,” Felix said glumly. “But do you want to fight him?”

“No,” said Annette with a sigh. “Obviously not.”

They walked in silence for a bit, passing countless Fraldarius Crests and heirloom swords on the walls.

“Do you think your uncle is so sworn to Cornelia’s cause that he’d die for it?” Felix asked finally.

“I . . . I didn’t think so,” Annette said uncertainly. She sighed again. “I guess we’ll find out.”

“So you want to join the march on Fhirdiad?” Felix asked. They’d reached the duke’s quarters now, and he stopped in front of the door, but Annette made no move to go in. He looked down at her to find she was glaring at him, defiant not just towards his question, but the world as a whole.

“Do you really doubt, after all we’ve been through, what I’d do for this Kingdom?” she asked sharply, dropping his arm to stare up at him with a frown.

Felix faced her fully, refusing to look away this time. His hands now free, he traced his fingers across her cheek, where he could still clearly picture the vicious cuts that had criss-crossed her face the last time he’d let Cornelia get too close to her, and for too long.

“I’ve never, in my life, doubted what you’d do for the Kingdom,” he promised, and Annette didn’t smile, but he knew she believed him.

Felix thought – or maybe hoped – that Annette was leaning in to kiss him, just then, but instead she wrapped her arms across his back and buried her face against his shirt, silently nestling against his heart.

And it was suddenly easy to know what to do, just then. Felix wrapped Annette in his arms, pulling her closer as he gently rested his cheek against her hair, breathing slowly, saying nothing. They rested there, together, with no one to find them and nothing to break them apart, and tomorrow was uncertain but that moment was assured. The smile Annette gave him when she finally pulled away was something he’d never seen before – soft and steady and only for him – and he almost regretted closing his eyes and leaning down to kiss her one last time for the night.

Almost.

“Sleep, then?” he finally asked, pulling away. “It’s been . . . a long day.”

“I guess it has,” Annette murmured, lazily leaning back against him for a moment. Felix was tempted to let his hands linger around her once more, but she pulled back, fumbling slightly at the doorknob even though they hadn’t bothered to lock it.

“Well then,” Felix said. “Goodnight?”

Annette looked up at him in genuine surprise that slowly turned into genuine amusement.

“Don’t you dare leave,” she said, grabbing his hand as she swung the door open.

Felix didn’t argue.

***

Felix had trouble concentrating during the war council the next morning.

He could practically hear mocking words from the tiny facsimile of Sylvain that annoyingly lived in his brain – what’s wrong, buddy, not enough sleep last night? Felix tried to push the preemptive, hypothetical teasing away and redoubled his efforts to listen to Dimitri’s reports. Surprisingly enough, he _had_ slept well the night before, with Annette curled up against him, her head tucked neatly under his chin. Perhaps once or twice her hair had tickled him awake and surprise that this wasn’t a dream had kept him lingering between consciousness and sleep, staring at the tricks of the moonlight on her hair and her skin and the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. But when sleep did find him, it was deep, and sound, and Annette’s soft and gentle breathing replaced both his nightmares and her songs. He’d woken that morning with a kind of peaceful energy that wasn’t born of pure adrenaline, and for a moment the feeling of being well-rested confused him almost as much as the reality of Annette mumbling for five more minutes while clutching his arm. It was nice.

But he still couldn’t concentrate on a damn thing Dimitri was saying.

Part of it was that he’d heard half of these details already, the night before. War councils were tedious to begin with, and Felix often felt they spent more time talking in circles than solving actual problems. He sank lower and lower in his chair as yet another person clarified the three-pronged nature of the attack; as Dedue and Sylvain got into a heated discussion on supply transport, as Gustave clarified for a fifth time the exact route they’d take to get to Fhirdiad. Annette had once bemoaned that she was certain he missed every aspect of his life as an officer as they watched the days tick away in Dominic. That was decidedly not true.

He was also having trouble parsing the new dynamics of the war council, which might’ve been interesting to someone like Claude, who certainly watched every speaker with a shrewd and careful eye, but which Felix just found profoundly frustrating. For most of the year, Gustave had taken the lead in most war councils, with Byleth adding occasional, concise additions and Dimitri barely present. After Gustave disappeared, war councils had been a scattered, uncertain affair, and although Dimitri was finally willing to participate, he had none of the efficiency that Gustave brought to the table. That had changed in the past month. Dimitri and Byleth easily moved through a series of reports and strategies, deferring to Claude on occasion and deftly balancing discussion from the group with their own agenda. It was strange to see a unified front after the mess that their army had been. Felix supposed he was grateful, but he was too busy trying to keep up with the changing dynamics to really pay attention to the content of the conversation.

“From all reports, we easily outmatch the strength of Cornelia’s soldiers,” Claude was saying, his voice as easy and confident as if he were planning an afternoon picnic. “They’re demoralized and stretched too thin across the country, and even the ones she’s called back to Fhirdiad will be exhausted from travel. The real concern is rumors that Cornelia is controlling magical golems of some sort – they have powerful offense and no sense of self-preservation, which is a pretty nasty combination.”

“Is she controlling the golems herself, or are they some sort of independently functioning automaton?” Annette asked, leaning forward towards the center of the table. “Those are two different magical phenomena which require completely different strategic responses.”

Annette also made it hard to concentrate, admittedly. She’d settled back into her rhythms and habits with what Felix could only describe as a delighted intentionality – she was determined, it seemed, to prove that she had not fallen behind in the two months she’d been gone. She took notes at a frantic pace regardless of who was speaking. She sat up straighter whenever she was about to speak, always taking a deep breath before she said anything, always with a slight pause after the first few words, as if she was checking to see if someone would cut her off. She exchanged mysterious, significant glances with Mercedes at seemingly arbitrary intervals, and Felix had no idea what they meant. Felix had had months, if not years, of practice to not openly stare at Annette when she was trying to accomplish things. He was no better than when he’d started. 

“That’s the problem, isn’t it, Annie?” Sylvain said. Contrary to Felix’s hypotheticals, the real Sylvain had the decency to look appropriately serious during this meeting, rapping his fingers on the table during various reports until Ingrid caught them and held them still. He leaned forward now, folding his hands together. “We don’t know enough about Cornelia’s magic forces to answer that question. We outnumber her troops but we’re still going in half-blind.”

“We’ll have to divide up mages equally,” Byleth said thoughtfully, her calm voice never rising no matter how chaotic the meetings got. “They’re serving as an attack force as well as a research team. It won’t be an easy mission but we don’t have time to wait for more information.”

A conflicted series of expressions flickered across Annette’s face – eagerness to be useful, disappointment at a lack of information, excitement at the word “research,” concern that there was little she could do at the moment – and she returned to scribbling notes on the papers in front of her. Felix glanced over at Dimitri, and realized the boar was staring at him staring at Annette.

Felix looked at the floor for the rest of the meeting.

The council ended at midday, which was remarkable, considering the gravity and difficulty of the upcoming battle. Officers gradually left the meeting room, off to train or prepare or have one final day of rest before the battle the next day. Felix hoped to slip out the side door, to find the training grounds or some solitude, to look for Annette later, but he had no such luck. Dimitri, carefully collecting papers at the end of the table as Felix walked by, called out to him just loudly enough that Felix couldn’t pretend he didn’t hear. Rolling his eyes, Felix turned.

“Did you need something, boar?” he asked impatiently. Everyone was filing out of the room; they would soon be the only two left behind.

“Ah, yes. Felix.” Dimitri nervously shuffled some papers into an order that surely didn’t matter, then looked up from his work with a frown. “How are you feeling? You seemed a bit . . . disengaged, in the meeting.”

“You’re imagining things,” Felix lied. “I’m fine. I’ve never been more engaged.”

Dimitri frowned. “I expected to see you on the training grounds this morning. I hope your arm isn’t troubling you,” he said, halfway a statement and halfway a question.

“My arm is perfectly functional,” Felix snapped, keeping his voice low as he watched Ashe coax Dedue out of the room and away from their conversation. “I might try some training this afternoon, if we’re done with this conversation.”

“Mercedes could take another look, if you had any concerns –”

“Leave it, boar,” Felix interrupted. “I know my own sword arm.”

There was a long pause. Dimitri set his papers down and turned, leaning against the table behind them. He cast a long, hard look at Felix, who pretended not to notice. Finally, he spoke.

“You know, if we win this battle, I’ll be king of Faerghus,” he said slowly. It was possible he was trying to keep the tone conversational, but that wasn’t a thing one said conversationally. “You’re already a duke,” he added.

“I’m aware of the stakes. This is not a battle I’m taking lightly,” Felix said sharply. He leaned against the table as well, crossing his arms and looking away. “Mercedes says my arm is fine. You’ll have my shield at the capital.”

“That’s not the shield I'm worried about,” Dimitri said quietly. “And that’s not the healing I’m worried about, either.”

Felix scoffed. “You always were one for pretty words,” he muttered. He snuck a glance at Dimitri, who was staring at him intently, concern written on his face.

“I’m not making a boyish plea for friendship, Felix,” he said. “We have to be able to work together, after this. If I’m to be any sort of king, I have to depend on you someday - and that day is approaching faster than I ever thought possible. And that means we have to be able to move on from . . . our quarrel.”

“When you threw me against a wall,” Felix helpfully supplied. “And abandoned your most loyal allies.”

“You know there was more at stake than –”

“My request was reasonable,” Felix said sharply. “My reasons were just. You cannot tell me I was wrong, to care about her.”

There was a pause, and Felix could practically feel the air change around them as Dimitri considered his options for what to say next. It was a habit Felix recognized from their youth, the heavy, careful pauses that he’d almost forgotten about. He wondered if that would make Dimitri a better or worse king, the laborious, painful way he could weigh his words.

“I’m not asking you to forget what I’ve done,” he said finally. “Two months ago. Or over the past five years. I know you don’t forget. That’s one of the reasons –” he paused. Frowned. Started over. “I’m asking you to move forward with me. No more, no less.”

“After we take Fhirdiad?” Felix asked. It was tomorrow. This time tomorrow Faerghus might have a king.

“As soon as possible.”

It was Felix’s turn to pause, scowling and uncertain. His silences never carried the weight of Dimitri’s. From somewhere in the hallway outside, he heard Annette’s laughter. He looked up to see her and Byleth walking by the open door. It was such a strange thing, to see the professor smile, ever.

“She took your side, if you can believe that,” Felix muttered. “Not that that changes how I feel,” he added, a little too quickly.

“Annette?” Dimitri asked, and Felix wasn’t sure why he sounded so surprised. Plenty of people had disagreements with their wives. “So you two – you told her – I’m sorry, should I go talk to her about -?”

“Absolutely not,” Felix said.

“Claude said I should leave you two alone about . . . things,” Dimitri added, almost sheepishly.

“Oh, do you always take Riegan’s advice on what to talk about these days?” Felix asked, bristling.

“I mean. Quite often,” Dimitri said. After a brief pause he added, “So then . . . things are good? With Annette?”

“None of your business,” Felix grumbled.

“Ah,” Dimitri replied. Annette laughed again, further away as they walked down the hallway. It was possible Felix imagined it entirely. He wished Dimitri weren’t quite so patient with the silences, these days.

“I want to . . . I'm going to ask her to come to Fraldarius, after the war,” Felix said, definitely not looking at Dimitri or towards Annette’s laughter as he said it. “Permanently. I don’t want . . . it would be annoying, to travel to Dominic just to see her. Especially if you’re constantly dragging me to Fhridiad to decide wheat levies or whatever terrible thing kings do.”

“That . . . Felix, I’m so happy for you,” Dimitri said finally, and Felix looked up just in time to wave Dimitri’s hand away from his shoulder.

“Don't be dramatic; I haven’t even asked her yet, idiot,” Felix snapped, crossing his arms to have something to do with them after his protective flailing. “Who knows, maybe she’ll say no.”

“Is that – is that likely?” Dimitri sounded legitimately surprised as he asked it.

“. . . shut up,” Felix muttered, and he tried not to mind that Dimitri almost certainly saw him smile before he could turn away.

They were intercepted by Gustave on their way out of the room, and Felix wondered briefly whether Annette actually got her eavesdropping habit from her father’s side of the family. If so, Gustave didn’t show it.

“Your highness, a quick word, if you have time,” he said, his tone as grave and important as ever.

“Yes, Gustave, is everything alright?” Dimitri asked. Felix edged to the side, hoping he’d be able to sneak away without either of them caring.

“My wife has asked to join the battle tomorrow,” Gustave explained. “I told her I would speak to you about it.”

“What? Fantine?” Felix asked, stopping in his tracks. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised. He hadn’t gotten a terribly clear look at the action while driving the carriage out of Dominic after the wedding, but he knew for a fact that some of the magical bursts of light exploding behind him were colors outside of Annette’s repertoire. Fantine Dominic evidently knew her way around a battlefield.

Gustave didn’t say any of this. He merely nodded, and continued, “She knew Cornelia, for a time, when they studied at the Royal School of Sorcery – and evidently afterwards, briefly. She tells me she might have familiarity with Cornelia’s magical innovations, which could be useful to us.” He frowned, and added, “She’s also quite skilled in offensive magic.”

“Terrifying,” Felix muttered for clarification.

“I mean, that certainly sounds like an excellent resource,” Dimitri said, with a bemused glance in Felix’s direction. “Tell her to run things by Byleth; I’m sure she’ll want to make proper additions to battalion formations.”

“It’s possible she’s already found her,” Gustave said with a brief look of guilt flashing across his face. “I told her it would be more proper to speak to you first, but Byleth was already wanting to speak to my daughter, and Fantine might have followed after –”

“Do you know where they went?” Felix interrupted. Gustave looked over at him as if surprised to hear him speak.

“The sitting room in the east wing?” he ventured. “I believe. Annette mentioned something about tea and snacks.”

“Great,” Felix said. “Bye.” He walked away before they could reply.

Dimitri had asked for his loyalty, or his cooperation. Blessedly, he hadn’t said anything about manners.

Felix wasn’t sure what he had planned to do, once he got to the sitting room in the east wing. Maybe barge in and demand Byleth treat Annette and her mother with proper respect. Maybe try to catch a glimpse of Annette as he continued to the training grounds. Maybe just confirm that Fantine was there – not that Gilbert Pronislav would lie; simply that hearing him refer to having a wife and daughter was so bewildering Felix didn’t know what was real anymore.

The door was ajar, and he heard Annette and Byleth speaking in low, urgent voices. A third voice filtered through which Felix realized must be Fantine’s, although he didn’t recognize it at that pitch. Their conversation didn’t necessarily sound confidential (even if Annette was trusting enough to leave a door open during a private conversation – and Felix had his doubts that she was – Byleth certain was not), but it did sound important, and pressing, and Felix suddenly felt oddly out of place. He might have walked by, then, but the cadence of Annette’s voice was familiar and comforting – she was explaining a Reason problem gone wrong, she was telling a long and complicated story, she was working through a decision that she already knew the answer to. Felix took a seat on the nearby staircase and listened without really listening. He thought about tomorrow’s battle, and Fraldarius in a year’s time, and Annette’s insistence that he try to forgive what he found unforgivable. They were things with no answers, at least not yet, but hearing Annette talk, one room away, made him feel like there might be answers, someday. It was, at the very least, a sound he liked to listen to.

Annette brightened when she saw him sitting there, fifteen minutes later, as she led the way out of the room with Fantine and Byleth close behind.

“Felix! What are you doing here?” she asked, cheerful and surprised.

Felix shrugged. “Waiting for you. Also, I live here.”

Annette wrinkled her nose. “I don’t mean _here_ , I mean – you know what I mean! You can’t just sit around waiting to tease me, you know.” But she still flounced over and took a seat next to him, as if sitting on the stairs was a marvelous way to spend the afternoon that she was delighted to have thought of.

“I thought you’d be on the training grounds, Felix,” Byleth said calmly, coming up behind Annette and looking down at him.

“Might go this afternoon,” Felix said. “I’m trying to keep strain off my sword arm.”

Byleth nodded and, clearly finding the only conversation of interest now concluded, turned to go. Fantine cast a highly suspicious and questioning glance at Annette and Felix settled on the stairway, but if she found the _mise en scène_ more intriguing than Byleth did, she was soon distracted from whatever questions she had.

“So, Fantine, you mostly studied Reason at the School of Sorcery?” Byleth was asking even as she walked away. Fantine had little choice but to follow, despite the wry final look she gave Annette before turning away.

“I dabbled here and there in a bit of everything,” she said as they walked away. “All my certificates were in Reason officially, but I’m not a terrible healer if you’re truly desperate for one. . .”

Their voices long faded away before Annette turned to Felix.

“You know this castle has, like, well over a hundred chairs and couches and benches and things, right?” she asked with a smile, bumping her shoulder into him.

“I wanted to see you,” Felix said. He looked away, blushing, as her smile grew wider. He nodded in the direction Byleth had left. “How’d it go with . . . everything?”

Annette shrugged beside him. “She worries about me having to fight my uncle, but she’d rather have me fight than stay behind.”

“Ah,” Felix said. After a moment, he added, “And how are you, with, um. With everything?”

Annette frowned at this, taking the question seriously. “I. . .also worry.” She shook her head. “My mother will join us on the front lines, Byleth’s decided. My father is barely out of captivity and he wishes to fight. My uncle rides under Cornelia’s banners.” She looked up at him, her eyes resolute even if he could sense tears forming at their edges. “I don’t fear for myself, Felix, I’ve never feared for myself.”

Felix threaded his fingers through hers, resting his hand on top of hers. “I know,” he said quietly. They’d always had that in common.

Annette rested her head on his shoulder, carried by the weight of the day. “Tell me again we’re going to win tomorrow,” she mumbled against him.

“We’re going to win. I won’t lose,” Felix repeated, like a mantra, or a prayer. He let go of her hand and moved his arm around her waist, tugging her closer. “I won’t lose _you_ ,” he added for emphasis. “Not again.”

Annette smiled against him, slightly, leaning into his words. “Okay,” she said softly. “I trust you.”

It was an impossible trust, because it was an impossible promise. But, Felix realized as Annette found his other hand and interlocked their fingers once more, being impossible didn’t make it any less real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An alternate title for this chapter would be “Felix tells his wife he loves her,” which doesn’t seem like a big deal but if you take into account the layers of Faerghus repression going on in this fic it actually is quite plot significant. But I guess, like, spoilers. 
> 
> Honestly there could probably be an entire chapter of Felix angrily telling Blue Lions that yes, they’re married, and no, it’s none of their business, don’t ask stupid questions, but I’m not sure there’s a whole lot of plot to be wrung out of that particular cul-de-sac. But please join me in imagining his next conversation with Ashe, who is just trying to keep up with things; it would be so awkward and so wonderful.
> 
> Wow, we’re really coming down to the last few chapters of this thing, huh? I’ll be stoked if I can get the full thing done in under a year, and that seems pretty likely? Knock on wood, but there’s only a couple chapters left, and the last chapter is more of an epilogue, anyway. So, uh, stick around for that!
> 
> On that note – probably going to be a while until the next update. I have a few pieces I want to post for Mercedue Week at the beginning of October, which would be the same week as a normal update for this. So I don't want to post like 4 things in one week, that seems like grounds for mass unsubscribing. Also, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but I tend to get carried away whenever there’s a possibility of two mages fighting, so . . . .next chapter might take me a while.
> 
> So, you know! Be patient with me please; at the very least I gave you less of a cliffhanger this time than last time, although I guess there are still many reasons to still be stressed for everyone from Dominic!
> 
> I’ll be back, though! Hugs and kisses for now!


	23. Annette Flips a Switch

Annette barely recognized the city streets of her childhood through the smoke of the battlefield. She was used to fighting on open battlegrounds or protecting the outskirts of smaller villages. Even the battles around Garreg Mach had felt more like defending a fortress than an actual city. But Fhirdiad was undeniably a city, and Felix led them down side streets lined with abandoned shops and tightly locked houses that were never meant to be strategic cover.

They were a small band, acting without a battalion, which Felix preferred and Annette’s father hated. Byleth had sent them primarily on a scouting mission: Investigate the automatons fighting on Cornelia’s behalf. Don’t engage. Bring back necessary information for how best to defeat them. It wasn’t the first time Annette had been sent on reconnaissance rather than staying in strict battalion formation, but she was usually included as backup – it never hurt to have a healer close by if you were behind enemy lines. This was the first time she was expected to gather the information herself. She tried to ignore the pressure and responsibility and focus on walking quickly, and silently, through yet another back street that she could have sworn she and Mercie walked down on a particularly disastrous double date while at the School of Sorcery.

“Watch it,” Felix said under his breath, flinging out his arm suddenly. Annette cast a nervous glance at her parents, but though Gustave’s frown deepened even more than usual, and Fantine’s fingers nervously twitched with magic, no one moved as Felix crept forward towards the side alleyway they were approaching.

Felix’s sword flew up as the assassin rounded the corner, knives already drawn and dangerous. Felix struck, and Aegis gleamed as he blocked, and then he struck again. The exchange was fast, and brutal, and over before Annette could shape her winds to move around Felix and catch their target. The assassin fell at his feet, and Felix gestured to them to follow as he started walking again.

“There could be more where he came from,” Annette murmured as she hurried to catch up to him, sliding beside him. “I’m surprised he didn’t travel with a battalion.”

“Probably a scout,” Felix said, casting a glance over her head as they walked out into a main road, which was much more open but appeared abandoned. “Cornelia won’t have resources to cover the whole city; he was a fool to not stay hidden.”

“He didn’t hit you, did he?” Annette asked. “Those knives could have been –”

“Coated in poison, I know, Annie,” Felix said. He cast a wry glance in her direction. “You’ve mentioned that possibility before.”

“First of all, because I’m right. And second of all, because you never listen the first time,” Annette grumbled. A ghost of a smirk appeared on Felix’s face, and Annette was prepared to launch into a lecture, active battlefield or no, but it quickly faded as they came up to a railing. Leaning over the railing, Annette could see another street below them, although the merchant carts that lined the street had long been abandoned at news of the approaching army. Annette craned her neck as she looked down, but Felix gently placed his hand on her shoulder, and followed his pointing arm to look across the road, to another raised platform across from them.

“Automatons,” he muttered. “I thought this would be our best vantage point.”

Annette could spot three, possibly even four, hulking, oversized dolls staggering through the city on automated legs buried underneath armored skirts. Their movements were jerky and mechanical, but even from this distance they loomed large, three to four times the size of an average man. Annette gulped as one turned towards them, and she could feel Felix’s hand on her shoulder tighten, ready to pull her down or push her away, but the automaton either didn’t have the range or didn’t have the inclination to launch an attack. It stumbled away in the opposite direction after an excruciating, creaky turn away from them.

“What now?” Fantine asked, stepping closer behind Annette and placing a hand on the railing beside her. Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the horizon of automatons ahead of them.

“We wait. We watch,” Felix said grimly. He looked over his shoulder. “Gustave, take defense,” he called out. Annette saw her father’s frown twitch, but he gave a slight bow and turned away from them, scanning the streets behind them for soldiers stupid enough to try to attack. Felix turned back and glanced at Fantine. “If you can figure out anything about them just from watching, great. But Byleth’s given orders for our strongest soldiers to make intermittent attacks.”

“If we can watch them attack, we may get some insight into how to defeat them,” Annette finished the thought. Felix nodded tersely. Even traveling in a group this small set him on edge, and Annette could track the way he glanced around uneasily, making dozens of contingent plans in the event of an attack. She lightly threaded her fingers through his, loose enough to break free in an instant, and he didn’t pull away as they stood and watched the grotesque dance of Cornelia’s monsters.

“She’s not controlling them, that much is certain,” Fantine said after watching them in silence for a time.

“With this number, I don’t see how she could,” Annette agreed. “But they don’t seem to be, well, _sentient_.”

“No, they’re moving in patterns,” Fantine mumbled, almost to herself, leaning forward and squinting. “Repeated motion, set up for a patrol. Doubtless they’ll attack if anyone comes within range, but until then –”

The pegasus battalion appeared as if Fantine had summoned them with her hypothesis. Annette tried to see if Ingrid was leading the charge, but from this distance it was impossible to tell. What was more observable was how their lances did little against the creature’s armor; how the rush of wind and forceful attacks barely knocked it off its prepared route.

“That’s some armor,” Felix said with a low whistle. “Still, if we can find a break in the armor, pinpoint some sort of weakness –”

“It won’t work,” Fantine said suddenly, an edge of urgency in her voice. “At least – I don’t think it will.”

“Why not?” Felix asked, a hint of annoyance in the question. “This isn’t the first malformed monster we’ve faced; we’re well-trained to exploit weaknesses, coordinate attacks –”

Annette tightened her grip on his hand, and he cut off. She pointed forward. “I think she’s right, Felix,” she said softly. “Look at its armor.”

The battalion was retreating quickly, flying just out of reach of the mechanical, swinging arms of the automaton. Their lances had met their mark repeatedly, giant holes appearing in the armored skirt of the monster. But as Annette looked on, the holes appeared to begin to repair themselves.

Felix swore under his breath. And then again, more loudly.

“Magic,” Fantine said darkly. “Obviously they’re already powered by magic. But it’s more than that. Cornelia – she’s channeling extra power to them. The army will beat itself bloody trying to break through them.”

“At the moment we’re just testing defenses,” Felix said, frowning in thought. “We have other routes through the city; other battalions attempting to reach Cornelia. If she falls, will they lose their power?”

“I doubt it,” Fantine replied, never one to sugar-coat. “If she’s not controlling them, then this extra magic is probably externally enforced. Cornelia’s a genius at mechanics infused with magical properties. We’d have to destroy the external source to take them down. But that could be anywhere in the city.”

“Not anywhere, though, right?” Annette said. “It would need to be somewhere outside the line of battle, somewhere with enough space to set up whatever devices she’s installed, somewhere away from people but with enough infrastructure –”

“The Royal School of Sorcery,” Fantine said, finishing the thought Annette had started. She frowned. “I suppose she could have found a large enough space in the palace, but that’s an open target if they do break her line of defense.”

“The School of Sorcery was disbanded following the coup four years ago,” Felix said. “As far as I know, the grounds have been abandoned for years.”

“We could be wrong,” Fantine admitted. “Perhaps she has a mage dedicated to controlling them, or she’s managed to harness a power source more compact. Perhaps she’s controlling them from the palace, and the only way to stop them is to get through her.”

“Or perhaps you’re right,” Felix said, shortly but not insincerely. “We won’t know unless we look.” He dropped Annette’s hand and took off walking towards the abandoned campus. “Let’s go,” he said, aimed mostly at her father as he looped his patrol back towards them.

They hurried down the main street before Felix gestured to another side alley, and they continued through the back streets of Fhirdiad, smoke and battle in the distance. Felix was less of a lead, now, as the entire party knew the destination and the quickest routes to get there, but he still would occasionally stop them to reroute or check their surroundings, the threat of scouts and assassins never far behind them.

Annette could feel the magic before the School of Sorcery even came into view. Not the pleasant, nostalgic hum of magic practice and experimentation that she always associated with her time at school, but a dark, tainted magic that raised the hair on her arms and the back of her neck.

“Something’s here,” she muttered to Felix as the tallest dome of the main building came into view. “Maybe not what we’re looking for, but _something_. You can practically smell the dark magic.”

“Cornelia always did want rooms at the Royal School,” Annette’s mother said, coming up behind them. “Maybe not a teaching position, but she was always after access to their books and equipment. I’m not surprised she took over.”

The front doors were broken down, any locks long ruined by time and neglect. Annette looked around at the grand entry hall that she’d always hoped to return to someday. Not like this, she thought, before pushing the thought out of her mind.

“There don’t seem to be any guards,” Gustave said, looking around the entry hall with a similar curiosity. “No one stopped our entrance, at any rate.”

“I doubt Cornelia could spare the manpower,” Felix said. “We did slip through their front lines to even get back this way.” He cast a worried glance at Annette. “How big is this campus? I don't like the idea of splitting up to search for – whatever we’re looking for.”

“If it’s the size and scope I think it is, Cornelia probably needed an open space for it,” Fantine said thoughtfully. She tilted her head and closed her eyes. “And it seems to be coming from . . . that direction,” she added, pointing off to a northeast window. Annette closed her eyes and tried to follow the magic the way her mother did, but at the moment the smog of dark magic seemed omnidirectional.

“Maybe the east courtyard?” she said, mentally reconstructing the school grounds in her mind. “Or the tea gardens?”

“Those are the most likely candidates,” Fantine agreed. She gave Felix an apologetic smile. “You and Annette take the courtyard; keep an eye out. Cast a flare if you find something; meet back here otherwise.”

Felix grimaced, but time was more important than numbers, and Annette grabbed his hand and dragged him towards the courtyard before he could argue. 

“Don’t worry, I’ll protect you,” she said, only half-teasing, as she pulled him down a side hallway that led to the courtyard. Giant stained glass windows lined the outer side of the hallway, and portraits and tapestries lined the inner wall. Rather than depicting famous mages or former headmasters, both the windows and many of the paintings were commissioned to represent abstract magical concepts, swirling colors and patterns meant to evoke breakthroughs in Reason and Faith magic. Annette remembered with a pang of nostalgia how shocked she had been to see tapestries that honored ideas rather than ancestors. Her shock and delight seemed so buried in the past now, it felt almost obscene to look at the portraits again.

“Protect yourself,” Felix snapped in his usual gruff, warning manner. He glanced behind his shoulder even as Annette pulled him forward. “I hate to say it, but Gustave has a point. I don’t see why there aren’t any guards if this is clearly Cornelia’s center of magical operations. And what did you mother mean, the magic is coming from this direction?”

“Can’t you sense it?” Annette asked. Felix had always had a knack for Reason that seemed more inherent than studied, even if he steadfastly refused to attend any lectures on the subject or practice it in any meaningful way. If anyone could sense magic, she figured, it would be him.

Felix shrugged. “I feel like I want to crawl out of my own skin, but not in any _specific_ way, no.”

“That’s not a terrible description,” Annette said encouragingly. She’d tried to drop his hand once they cleared the entry hall, determined to stay professional, but Felix had surprisingly refused to let go, lacing his fingers through hers even tighter as they walked. “But it’s more than just a generally bad feeling, I think, when it’s concentrated.” She paused, trying to think of an example. “It’s like the smoke on the battlefield. You can smell it from far away, but the close you get, the easier it is to tell where it’s coming from, right?”

Felix shrugged. “Sometimes. Sometimes it just seems to be overwhelmingly everywhere.”

“Exactly!” Annette beamed up at him, and Felix gave her a look that said maybe her metaphor wasn't as clear as she’d hoped. “The point is,” she added, “If even a sword lunkhead like you can sense the dark magic, it’s got to be . . . really . . . near.”

“Ah,” said Felix, looking up. “I see your point.”

They stepped out into the courtyard and looked up in unison. The courtyard had once been a well-cultivated space, with neat hedges and a corner fountain, partitioned off by a series of pillars and an elevated walkway that ran along the edge of the grounds. The grass was overgrown where it wasn’t dead and the fountain was dry. But none of that mattered right now.

Annette looked up to the corner pillar at the far end of the courtyard. Resting on top of it, well above her head, a pulsating sphere of purple-black light revolved, inches above the flat top of the pillar. Annette took a step closer, feeling revulsion with every step she took. The magic itself was static and inert – she doubted it could or would attack her – but the air around it seemed toxic. Annette tried and failed to suppress a coughing fit, and Felix was at her elbow before she realized she was stumbling, holding her up and practically pulling her away from the magic source.

“Don’t – don’t go near that thing,” he said, and Annette almost felt his voice was raised, but there was a strange ringing in her ears that threw her off. “We don’t know what it does – if it could hurt us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous Felix, that’s literally what I’m supposed to find out,” Annette protested, squirming to get out of her grip but only succeeding in turning to face him. His eyes were wide and panicked, glowing embers that flashed even in the middle of the day. Annette had no doubt he could feel the effects of concentrated dark magic even if he couldn’t articulate them as well as she could. She shook his arm slightly. “You can’t bring a mage on for research and not let her do research, my love.”

The pet name seemed to shock him back into reality even if the reasoning didn’t, and he let her go. “I mean . . . I don’t like it,” he finally mumbled.

Annette gave him a wan smile that didn’t match the way her heart was pounding. “I don’t either. But regardless, I’d say we’ve found our magic source, wouldn’t you?”

She turned in the direction of the tea gardens, slightly north and over a dividing hedge or two, and shot off a distress flare, easy and practiced from her most novice days as a mage. She turned back to Felix, who frowned at the flare with a look of concerned concentration, and tugged on his sleeve.

“Come on,” she said with more confidence than she felt. “Let’s go look at this malignant sphere of doom.”

They walked up to the corner pillar. The air was thick and heavy with dark magic and Annette felt the world spin slightly as they got closer to it. Felix adjusted his arm around her, although his own steps faltered with the occasional trip over nothing that made Annette’s heart skip for how unlike him that was.

“Right,” Annette said, staring up at the sphere with her hands on her hips. “I guess . . . give me a leg up?”

“Have you lost your mind?” Felix exclaimed. “I feel sick just – standing by it!”

“Well I can’t study it from down here!” Annette reasoned. “I’ll stay close to the edge, don’t worry.”

Felix gave her a look that implied he was going to worry very much, but he lost the staring contest quickly enough. “I’m surprised you can’t just fly up there,” he muttered, placing his left hand on top of his right to give her a foothold and crouching next to her.

“Gremories don’t fly, they levitate,” Annette corrected primly. “And I’m two months behind my studying schedule for that exam, as you know. Here we _go!_ ” She stepped onto Felix’s hands and he boosted her up with surprisingly coordinated ease. Annettte’s fingers scrambled against the smooth stone of the pillar, looking for a handhold, until she finally was able to scrape her hands along the top of the pillar. Felix gave her a second boost, pushing her up over his head, and Annette scrambled to pull her elbows, then her upper body, onto the top of the pillar, finally rolling to land in a fetal position at the edge of the flat surface.

“You got it?” she heard Felix call from down below. Annette poked her head over the edge and gave a cheerful thumbs up, before closing her eyes and wincing as a wave of nausea swept over her.

Right. There was still the sphere of dark magic to deal with.

Annette drew herself to her feet gingerly, careful to hug the edge of the pillar in a way that she was sure would make her classmates and her family and Felix alike twitch with concern. She gingerly reached towards the sphere. This close, it radiated a kind of cold rather than the heat she almost expected. She dared not to touch it. Looking at her feet, she snatched up a stick that had fallen from the surrounding trees goddess knew how many years ago. Carefully she swiped the stick towards the sphere. No effect. Once more, she swiped the branch, this time connecting with the sphere itself. It was like moving through fog, easy and shapeless, but the stick came out charred and broke in her hand, falling to the ground in a hundred ashy pieces.

Don’t touch it directly, then, Annette reasoned. She aimed a wind spell at the sphere, carefully avoiding any recoil that would send her flying over the edge. It didn’t bounce off, but instead seemed to fly directly through it and dissipate into nothing. Annette wondered vaguely if she would need some sort of counterspell to unravel this darkness, as if it were an attack standing in suspended animation.

“Annette Fantine Dominic, what are you _doing_? How did you even get up there?”

Annette turned from her experimentation to see her mother marching towards her, her father close behind, slower but no less concerned as he looked up at her.

“You saw my flare!” Annette called. Then, always one to answer a question asked of her, she added. “Felix helped me up!”

“It’s technically Annette Fraldarius, now,” Felix mumbled, but Fantine didn’t deign to respond, even if she heard him.

“Well – don’t go near that – that _thing_!” she yelled up to Annette, frantically gesturing to the rotating orb that Annette was sharing a perch with. “That’s got Cornelia’s dark magic written all over it!”

“I _realize_ that, Mother,” Annette said, trying very hard not to slip into her fifteen-year-old self while on the most important mission of her life. “That’s why I sent the flare.” She kept her voice as level and calm as possible, but she could hear the upwards, annoyed squeak towards the end.

“I’m going to go secure the perimeter,” Felix said suddenly, looking briefly to Annette, and then to Gustave. “I don’t like that we haven’t seen guards yet. Don’t send anymore flares until I get back, okay?”

He slipped between the back hedges, silently and quickly, before Annette had time to properly roll her eyes at him. She turned to properly roll her eyes at her mother, instead.

“I have plenty of space up here, don’t worry, Mother,” she said, which was more of an exaggeration than a lie – she had perhaps two feet where she could safely walk without running afoul of either the dark energy or the ledge. “I’m not sure the best way to diffuse the magic, is the problem. It’s a very complicated spell, whatever it is.”

“I’m not surprised,” Fantine replied, frowning up at the ledge and seeming to forget the danger she had previously worried about. “Even if it wasn’t for security measures, it must take an enormous amount of power and sophistication to provide power at a distance like this.” She took a step closer and placed her hand on the pillar, looking up and narrowing her eyes. “I’m sure we could figure out the proper countermagic, but it could take hours to unravel, if not days. I worry that won’t be enough time.”

“Unless you don’t need to counteract the spell yourself,” Annette’s father spoke up, and Annette glanced at him in surprise. Until this point he had mainly been a cautious observer, almost as jumpy as Felix in his own reserved way. He continued as Fantine and Annette broke away from the sphere to stare at him. “Cornelia should have had a safeguard somehow, a way to control the power that she wasn’t personally responsible for. If she’s meaning to lead the front lines, she can’t be expected to be doing menial tasks like controlling power supplies, magical or otherwise.”

“That makes perfect sense, dear,” Fantine agreed. “And Cornelia does revel in combining the magical and the mechanic, if those automatons are any indication. Annette, darling,” she called up to the ledge. “Do you see any sort of physical apparatus nearby? You rather have the bird’s eye view right now. She’d probably install it close by.”

“Ummm,” Annette hemmed. She shuffled to the left of the sphere, then to the right, then stopped in her tracks. “You mean like a lever?”

“Yes! A lever, a dial, a switch; anything that would control –”

“No, I mean,” Annette interrupted, her excitement getting the best of her. “There’s actually, literally a lever up here.”

“Ah!” Fantine said. “Well. That probably solves that, then.”

“Be careful, Annette,” Gustave said gravely, as if there was a way to carefully pull a lever.

Annette took his advice as best she could, carefully stepping over to the lever and avoiding the sphere of magic as much as possible. She tentatively reached out and grabbed it with one hand, and, finding herself still alive even after touching, gave it a solid yank. It barely moved. Wrapping both hands around the lever, Annette pulled as hard as she could. It gave a creaky groan and moved forward several inches. The magical sphere next to Annette wavered, shimmering in the sunlight, and Annette could swear the color changed to something less vibrant and more transparent.

From below, she could hear her mother give a cheer.

“Fantastic work, darling! That seems to do the trick. If you could just give it one final tug –”

“If you value your life, you’ll do no such thing. Step away from the lever, Annette.”

Annette whipped her head around, her hands still clutching the lever. Across the courtyard, her uncle sat astride his horse, flanked by soldiers wielding shining silver weapons.

“Hello, uncle,” she said softly, although she wasn’t sure he could hear her.

“Brother,” Gustave said, moving forward and holding his shield out, his weapon still at his side. “We come here as members of the Kingdom Army, serving the crown prince of Faerghus. Do not do anything that you regret.”

Gérald’s visor was pushed back, and the look he gave his brother was almost one of pity. He urged his horse forward, closer to them. His two flanking soldiers marched with him, though he signaled to the rest of the battalion to hang back. “Surrender now, Gustave,” he said, all the authority of Dominic territory behind his voice. “I fear I cannot save you from a charge of treason, but if you come with us peacefully, I can see that your family is unharmed.”

“ _His_ family? Really, now, Gérald,” Fantine said with an outraged glare.

Gérald swung his eyes past Gustave, down to Fantine and then upwards to Annette. “Cornelia assures me that she will be merciful,” he said, his voice so grave and gravelly Annette almost thought he believed it. “She is eager to have you join Dukedom forces, now that she’s seen your power as a mage, Annette.”

“I’d rather die,” Annette spat down, eyes flashing. Whether Cornelia’s words were empty promises or very real threats, even such a suggestion made her stomach turn.

“Don’t be so flippant, Annette – joining her or dying are your very real choices at the moment,” her uncle yelled up to her, and underneath his authority, his commands, his directives framed as advice, Annette could sense a very real hint of fear in his voice. “Now, will you let go of that dangerous contraption and come with me back to the castle, or do you think you can take the full force of Dominic with a washed-up knight and two amateur duelists?”

Annette thought about this for a second. Then, not breaking eye contact, she gave another tug on the lever. The sphere next to her wavered wildly – she could practically see through it at this point, and she grinned at it wickedly before returning a glare to her uncle.

He sighed, and lowered his visor. “Then you leave me no choice,” he said.

And he charged.

Annette’s wind spell was the first to make contact with the soldier running at Gérald’s side, a young myrmidon who had little chance of dodging and stumbled back on impact. Fantine’s spell was close behind, a series of pulsating beams of light that seemed to wrap around his arms and legs until he tripped over his own feet, falling to the ground.

Gustave ran forward, his axe drawn and his shield in front of him, and the clash of metal against metal rang throughout the abandoned courtyard. Someone screamed, although Annette didn’t know who. It might have been her. It didn’t take a trained eye – although Annette was a trained eye – to see that Gustave was outmatched by his brother. At one point, they may have been more equally skilled, but weeks of imprisonment had sapped her father’s strength more than anyone cared to admit. He returned one blow for every two, and his parries and blocks were too weak to be consistent.

Annette frowned and aimed a spell towards her uncle. A sickening feeling twisted in her stomach, even as she knew she didn’t have time for doubt or for mercy. Steeling herself for the inevitable, she drew a cutting gale to her fingertip and drew back her arms, prepared to strike.

An arrow flew over her shoulder and flung itself into the sphere behind her, disintegrating into ash. Annette gasped and stumbled backwards, jerking her spell at the last minute so it crashed into the assassin that had flanked her uncle’s right side. The spell made contact – Annette’s aim was always true – but the recoil and the surprise set Annette off balance, and as she stumbled to regain footing she crashed into the dark sphere of magic light that was still rotating lazily behind her.

Pain shot through her shoulder, along with a hissing sound directly below her ear that seemed to overtake the sounds of battle below. Annette fell to her knees, hearing her father shouting her name, hearing her mother scream and an almost identical sizzle as dark magic made contact with an unfortunate enemy, hearing the sound of metal on metal on metal. Annette blinked her eyes open to see her father standing over the assassin, now lying on the ground. She let out a warning cry of her own as Gérald rounded behind him, ready to strike, and he whirled back, his shield barely above his head in time to parry the blow., Annette gently prodded at her shoulder, looking at it as best she could. The magic had torn through the fabric of her borrowed warlock’s outfit, making an already-wide neckline practically nonexistent across her right shoulder. Viscous red welts were already formed along her upper arm, and it was painful to move her arm, but Annette imagined she should be thankful the damage wasn’t worse.

She pulled herself to her feet, trying quickly to regain a fighting position but wary of the danger that lurked behind her if she made a single misstep.

She turned just in time to see her uncle violently thrust his lance forward, and to see her father falter, and to see lance plunge past his shield and directly into his shoulder. Gustave crumbled to the ground, and the scream that tore out of Annette’s throat as she launched a wind spell was as desperate as it was useless. Gérald threw up his shield to easily block the incoming magic, his horse stumbling back slightly on the impact, and Gustave crawled backwards away from him. Annette felt her knees almost give out as she saw the trail of blood that followed her father.

“Surrender, brother,” Gérald repeated, dropping his shield and urging his horse forward. “I will not ask again.

“Gérald,” Gustave said, the end of the name getting lost in a bloody cough. “Cease this at once. This is not . . . what being a Dominic . . . means.”

“As if you would know what being a Dominic means, after all these years,” Gérald snapped, even as his lance faltered momentarily. “I will defend my territory and those in it. Will you surrender or not?”

“Never,” Gustave growled, his voice surprisingly strong as he struggled to pull himself to his knees.

“A knight to the end,” Gérald said softly. “I’m sorry.”

He raised his lance and his horse reared back, but before he could launch himself forward, Fantine threw herself in his path. Her arms were outstretched in a protective, warding gesture that might have been quaint if it weren’t for the erratic sparks of dark magic gathering in her palms and threatening to leap off in any direction.

“Step away from my family, Gérald,” she said, her voice low and as sharp as daggers. “I will not say it twice.

“Fantine,” Gérald said. Her name had a solemn, inevitable grief as he said it. “Do not make things worse for you and Annette, I beg of you. If you come with me now, I can save you. Don’t be a fool.”

Two dark, harsh, deep purple arches of light shot by either side of Gérald’s head. It was too far from him to be a hit and too close to him to be a coincidence. His horse reared back in fear, and Gérald struggled to bring it back down to two feet. Fantine shook her hands out deftly, once, twice, bringing more blackened energy to her palms.

“Don’t be a fool, indeed, Gérald,” she hissed. “I won’t miss next time.”

If Gérald’s lance shook as he held it in front of him, he didn’t let that stop him. “Step aside, Fantine,” he repeated, sounding almost automatic at this point. “I never – I can’t - I don’t want to hurt you. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“Uncle,” Annette shouted. He didn’t look up at her, but she knew he heard from the slight twitch of his shield, ready to block. She continued. “If you move an inch forward, I will hit you with the most powerful spells I know. And I’ve had two months of stolen spellbooks to draw from. You can’t fight all three of us at once. And you can’t hit me while I’m up here.”

She could practically hear her uncle sigh, although perhaps that was based on two decades of hearing him sigh rather than anything that actually happened. “I can’t, Annette, you’re right,” he said bluntly. “But my soldiers can.”

Annette looked to the side suddenly as her uncle gave a subtle wave of his hand, and she locked eyes with an archer with a bow trained directly on her. He must have crept up from the back line battalion during the previous firefight. And, as if her heart could break any more today, Annette realized with horror that she recognized him.

“Abel?” she exclaimed. “You – Felix probably taught you how to aim that damn bow, Abel. You’re really going to shoot me with it?”

The young axeman winced. Clearly conversation was above his pay grade, at this moment. “I’m sorry, Miss Dominic, I don’t want to,” he said, and he really did sound sorry. “If you let me help you down, nobody has to get hurt, but I have to protect Dominic, you know.”

Annette was sorely tempted to launch a wind spell at his face, more out of sheer annoyance than actual intent to harm. But her uncle loomed mere inches from her parents, and she had no idea how many soldiers lay in the shadows and lurked behind pillars. Instead, she crossed her arms and glared at Abel. The extra height seemed to help.

“A fine job _protecting_ Dominic you’re doing, right now,” she snapped. “What if a brigade of bandits attacks your town, Abel? You honestly think fighting for _Cornelia_ will do any good?”

“I have my orders, Miss Dominic. It’s not my decision,” Abel said. His hands shook slightly, but Annette had no doubt he could hit her from this distance. “And anyway, I don’t answer to your Duke Fraldarius, now. And he didn’t teach me how to use a bow.”

Felix slammed into Abel with enough force to knock a man twice his size over, pinning him to the ground with one knee and simultaneously yanking the bow out of his hands and casting it aside. Annette was a big enough person to admit that she probably should have noticed Abel sneaking up on her, and it was due to a combination of severe distractions and her own obliviousness that he took her by surprise. But she was fairly sure, against all logic, that Felix had more or less appeared out of thin air. Somewhere in the back of her mind, the part that didn’t have very good priorities, Annette was slightly relieved that Abel seemed just as surprised by Felix as she was.

“I didn’t teach you bows; I taught you to watch your damn back,” he snarled, shoving Abel’s shoulders to the ground as the young soldier tried to push himself up. “And it’s not Miss Dominic anymore, you were _there_ –”

“Felix, don’t hurt him!” Annette cried. Felix looked up at her, wrinkling his brow.

“Annette, he was going to _shoot_ you,” he protested. When Annette didn’t rescind her frown, his shoulders sagged. “Abel, don’t move,” he snapped at the thoroughly defeated soldier. Abel complied, and Felix looked over at Gérald. “Baron Dominic,” he said, his voice both more authoritative and more respectful than Annette thought possible, for Felix. “Withdraw your troops and retreat, and we will not fight you. Leave now.”

“I’ll give you this, boy, you’re foolhardy enough to fit right in with this family,” Gérald said, his inevitable frown hidden from view. “I have battalions at my back; entire troops of trained men. The three of you cannot take us all.”

“I’ve seen your troops, and I’ll take them all myself,” Felix growled, his sword flashing just slightly as he moved to draw it from its scabbard. Annette suddenly noted the dagger gleaming in his other hand, but he seemed fully prepared to throw it away for a sharper weapon if the opportunity required it.

“Youthful recklessness will just see you to an early grave, boy,” Gérald snapped, turning to face Felix.

“And aging stubbornness will see you to the same – and all your men with you,” Felix countered. Even if his knees were still fully planted against Abel’s back, Annette knew how quickly he could be on his feet and running in an attack. Panicked and frightened, she drew magic to her hands, watching out of the corner of her eyes as her mother did the same. From the opposite periphery, she could sense more soldiers gathering, ready to strike at a signal from her uncle. Gérald pivoted towards Felix, grasped the reigns of his horse, and pointed his lance towards him. Annette aimed her strongest wind spell directly in his trajectory towards Felix, squinted her eyes in concentration, and waited for the charge.

“Brother. Please.”

The charge never came.

Gustave coughed, and Annette was relieved to see that he was still even conscious, even as his voice cracked when he spoke. He pulled himself up to his knees, leaning against Fantine for support.

“Withdraw your troops and return to Dominic, Gérald,” he said, his voice uneven as he struggled to get through even that short sentence.

“You cannot stand; you can barely speak, and you ask _me_ to retreat?” Gérald said, turning slowly back to his brother. “You cannot possibly hope to defeat me.”

“Not for me,” Gustave said, coughing again. “Do it for . . . your own sake, brother.”

Slowly, Gérald pushed his visor back. There was a long pause as he swept his eyes over them all, angry and skilled and ready to strike.

“I would never surrender for my own sake,” he said finally, slowly. “I’ve never cared about my own sake. Perhaps that’s what sets us apart.”

“Then do it for Dominic!” Annette yelled, suddenly feeling that she understood what her father was asking. “Do it for the sake of your home, uncle – for the sake of _our_ home.”

“Annette . . .” her uncle trailed off, looking up at her, and she saw that same pained disappointment she was so used to flickering across his face. “I am here to protect Dominic. Don’t you understand by now – everything I do, everything I’ve done, has been to protect Dominic.”

“Then how did you end up here?” Annette said, shouting so he could hear her and not hiding her anger. “Who guards our territory tonight, uncle? Who protects the people? You stand here turning a weapon against your own brother, and you call it _protection_? Is this what you wanted?”

Gérald turned his eyes away from her, then, but he swept his gaze across the courtyard – over Fantine, shivering with fear and anger, over Felix as he pressed a dagger to Abel’s throat and waited for a reason to strike, over the dozens of men that stood behind them, ready to give their lives at his command. He opened his mouth, but no words came out.

“Uncle,” Annette said, her voice more confident as she saw his confidence falter. “Cornelia will not protect Dominic. The Empire will not Dominic. Only you can keep our territory safe. But that safety does not lie here, I promise you. All this place promises is needless death, and enemies who should have been family.”

“Please, Gérald,” Fantine echoed, even as she held a spell in her hand, ready to strike. “Dominic needs you alive.”

Gérald raised his lance and pointed it directly at Fantine’s heart. Annette felt as if there was no air in the courtyard, as if she couldn’t draw a breath even if she wanted to. But no one moved.

Gérald dropped his lance and slammed his visor down. The last glimpse of him Annette got was a disapproving, unhappy frown. “All troops, move out,” he roared, swinging his horse around. “We march for Dominic.”

“Thank you, Gérald,” Fantine called as he rode away, her magic already fading from her hands.

He paused, once, to look over his shoulder. “Gustave, keep yourself alive,” he grumbled, his voice slightly muffled by his helmet. “And look after her.”

He followed his men until he was in the lead once more, disappearing out of sight as they became mere shadows in the harsh light of the afternoon sun.

“Do you have plans for how to get down from there?”

Annette jerked her eyes away from the retreating Dominic soldiers and looked down at Felix, who frowned up at her. Glancing over his shoulder, she could see Abel running after the rest of the men, evidently unharmed.

She looked back at Felix. “Give me one second,” she said. Quickly dashing over to the lever, she gave it a final pull with as much strength as she could muster with her good shoulder. The lever finally flipped all the way, and Annette let out a sigh of relief.

The pulsing, purplish sphere of dark magic grew dimmer and dimmer until it appeared almost transparent, but certainly no longer glowed. With a final _pop_ , it dropped to the ground with a surprisingly heavy crash. It teetered towards Annette, and she nervously stepped away from it, taking one too many steps backwards until her heel met air, and she went toppling over the edge.

Felix caught her with an undignified _oof_ sound, and placed her back on her feet after stumbling back a bit himself. “That wouldn’t have been my _first_ plan, Annie,” he grumbled. “At least warn me next time.”

“It’s not like I did it on purpose!” Annette protested, turning towards him. “That was a very unstable –”

Felix pulled her into a hug before she could finish her sentence, wrapping one arm around her waist and burying his fingers in her hair with his other hand. Annette buried her face in his shoulder, letting out a longer, shuddering breath that she felt as if she’d been holding for the last hour.

“You scare me so much sometimes, you know that?” Felix muttered, resting his chin on top of her head.

“I’m fine,” Annette whispered back. “Everything’s fine now, right?”

She moved her arm up to wrap around him, and pain shot through her shoulder, sharp and deep in a way that her gasp.

Felix pulled back and swept his eyes across her, finally landing on the welts spreading across her shoulder. “Saints, Annette, did your uncle have a –”

“I backed into the dark magic,” Annette explained, wincing and looking at her shoulder. It was an ugly sight. “By accident. There was an assassin; I lost my balance.”

Felix swore under his breath, holding Annette at an arm’s length and frowning at the injury.

“It doesn’t hurt too much, I promise!” Annette lied unconvincingly. “And the warlock uniform was a spare from the army supply trunk; mine are still all at Garreg –”

“Annette, I’m really not worried about your _dress_ right now,” Felix interrupted. “We’ve got to get you to a healer.”

He dropped her arms and stood up straight, and for a moment Annette thought he might actually try to pick her up. She waved him off.

“I’m not the one we should be worrying about,” she said impatiently, looking behind him. “And I’m not the one who need a healer.”

Fantine was crouched over Gustave, whom she had helped to find a somewhat comfortable position lying in the grass. Annette brushed past Felix and ran over to her, nervously hovering. Two healers were not generally more effective than one, in serious cases, but Annette couldn’t help but worry, even if she worried that she wouldn’t be much help.

Blood seeped through her father’s uniform, and a horrifying puncture remained in his armor at the shoulder. His face was very pale, but his eyes blinked open as Annette leaned over him.

“Don’t worry about me . . . Annette,” he said slowly. “Go find . . . Prince Dimitri. He needs you more . . . right now.”

“Gustave, stop babbling,” Fantine said sternly, a final burst of warm, white light flowing from her fingers. “I’m sure this army has plenty of competent healers; we’ll find someone to fix you right up.”

“Mercedes runs a battalion on the back lines; Byleth asked them to stay at the end of the city; out of the sight of enemy troops,” Felix said, appearing at Annette’s elbow. He looked down at Fantine. “Can he walk?” he asked, uncertain.

Fantine grimaced. “Probably. Barely. If you support him on one side and I support him on the other.”

It took a few tries to get Gustave to his feet, between his injury and his height and his armor, but they managed to do it. Annette breathed a sigh of relief to see him standing, but he leaned heavily against Fantine as they walked, and she periodically pressed her hand to his shoulder, her fingers glowing with healing magic that only acted as a stopgap measure.

They limped out of the School of Sorcery, a thoroughly battered bunch. Fantine and Felix were able to hold Gustave up together, but his walking was slow and belabored even if Fantine had temporarily stabilized his wounds. Annette limped along beside them, feeling helpless and unhelpful, doing her best to keep her balance and breathing steady, as every stumble and gasp drew a sharp glance from Felix, who really needed to be concentrating on everything else.

The walk back down the side street of Fhirdiad was blessedly uneventful, although Annette kept her magic buzzing on her fingertips and Felix’s eyes darted at the slightest movements from the shadows of alleyways. A swordsman darted in front of them, once, but Annette’s immediate blast of magic slammed him against a side wall, and to her surprise, he scurried away before she could cast a follow-up.

“Might be a thief,” Felix muttered to her as she glanced after the retreating figure in surprise. “Might be a scout. Let me handle it next time.”

Annette couldn’t help it, she snorted. “Your hands are a little full right now, Felix,” she pointed out. Felix scowled and readjusted his arms around her father’s shoulder, but Gustave paid little interest to their conversation – Annette wondered if he was lucid enough to hold a conversation at all, let alone fight.

“I just – don’t overexert yourself,” he said with a glare at her. “I’m carrying enough Dominics for the moment, thank you very much.”

“Excuse you,” Annette said softly. “I'm a Fraldarius.”

Felix didn’t reply, but she could see the blush rise at the back of his ears. They mainly walked in silence, after that, beyond Fantine’s low, indecipherable encouragement to Gustave and Annette’s nervous humming, under her breath, that she imagined only she could hear.

It was a slow walk back to the medical battalion positioned at the outskirts of the city, and Felix’s inherent restlessness was beginning to rub off on Annette in the final stretch. It was a deep relief to see Mercie’s blond hair peeking out among her fellow bishops and priestesses, and even more of a comfort when she turned and saw them. Her face went through the familiar roulette of emotions that Mercedes always had when she saw an injury – surprise, concern, and then fierce determination – and Annette felt on solid ground for the first time in hours.

Annette got lost in a flurry of activity and healing magic and questions and lectures, mostly from Mercedes. She also lost track of her father, which she supposed was for the best. She vaguely remembered her mother kissing the top of her head and promising her that everything would be alright, before she disappeared into the crowd as well, doubtless to watch over Gustave’s treatment. Annette found herself sitting on a makeshift cot, Mercedes prodding at her shoulder and Felix pacing back and forth in front of her.

“I didn’t realize your uncle had such strong mages in his retinue!” Mercedes said as cool, clean magic ran across Annette’s shoulder, and she felt the bruises and welts begin to fade down and away. “No wonder you always had such a knack!”

“Oh. . . this wasn’t from them,” Annette said, a bit sheepishly. “I kind of walked into some dark magic by accident.”

She could hear, rather than see, Mercedes’s frown. “What?” she asked, clearly baffled.

“Is she going to be alright?” Felix broke in, settling in front of them. “I mean – the magic. We don’t really know its effects, long term, do we?”

“Mm, I think if it were anything particularly nasty, I would know by now,” Mercedes said, massaging another round of magic into Annette’s neck. For the first time it didn’t hurt more than it soothed. “You don’t feel your insides turning outward or anything, do you, Annie?”

“Um,” Annette ventured. “No?”

“See? She’ll be fine!” Mercedes said cheerfully. “Just needs some rest.”

“Goddess,” Felix muttered, closing his eyes, his voice full of relief, not annoyance. Annette realized suddenly how much concern he’d been carrying since they left the School of Sorcery. She reached out her hand and grabbed his without thinking. He grasped her fingers very tightly.

“You’re going to be alright,” he said, half a question and half a prayer. Annette squeezed his hand and smiled up at him. With a hesitant glance at Mercedes, Felix carefully leaned down and kissed Annette’s forehead, brushing her bangs out of her eyes and softly running his hand across her cheek as he did so. When Annette’s eyes fluttered back open, he was looking at her with a frown. She already knew she wasn’t going to like whatever it was he was going to say.

“I'm fine, Felix,” she assured him. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

“I’m going to find Dimitri,” he said finally, just a twinge of regret in his voice. “Someone needs to tell him what happened, that we can advance against Cornelia’s automatons now.”

“Don’t you think, Felix,” Mercedes said without looking up from Annette’s shoulder, where she was rubbing some salve into the remnants of the cuts and scrapes along her collarbone, “That he’ll have figured it out by now? If they’re truly weakened then the army has probably pushed the front lines through and is on its way to the palace.”

“If that’s the case, then I want to be there when they reach Cornelia,” Felix said, a dark shadow passing over his face. “She dies by my blade, today.”

“Felix,” Annette said sharply, struggling to stand up but getting tangled in the cot. Mercedes pushed her back down firmly, continuing to rub salve into her shoulder. Annette grabbed Felix’s other hand. “Don’t go charging off into battle alone. You know how powerful she is.”

Felix leaned in close, practically dropping to one knee as he pressed his forehead against hers. “I’ve seen her hurt you too many times, Annette, and I’ve done nothing,” he whispered. “This is my chance to fix things.” His solemn expression broke into something almost like a smile, and Annette was so surprised by this that when he squeezed her hands and then let them go, she let him slip away. “I”ll be back before you know it,” he promised, and he turned on his heel and hurried away before Annette could make any of her counterarguments.

“Should I have given you two some privacy?” Mercedes asked sweetly, in a tone that implied she wouldn’t have regardless of what Annette answered.

“I can’t believe him,” Annette grumbled as Mercedes took out a series of bandages and began to wrap them around her shoulder. “Running off like that, not even waiting to hear my answer. Cowardly villain. Villainous coward.”

“Mm, he might have a point, Annie dear,” Mercie replied calmly. She had heard Annette’s extensive variations of Felix’s villainous nature before, and had long stopped paying them much mind. She poked at the crook of Annette’s shoulder, and Annette winced involuntarily. “Even if you haven’t been on the front lines all battle, you _are_ recovering from an injury, you know. Not to mention the possibility of magic fatigue, after all that.”

“I feel fine,” Annette mumbled. Generally she appreciated that Mercie’s advice was fair and judicious, but at the moment she would have preferred blind agreement.

“We all feel fine until we don’t!” Mercedes sang with more cheerfulness than the statement implied. “And besides, you’ve done your part of the mission, right? You weren’t even assigned a battalion, Annie! The professor isn’t expecting you to fight on the front lines.” She tied off the final bandage with a practiced hand. Annette experimentally moved her arm up and down. She could cast spells easily; it wouldn’t be a problem at all.

“She didn’t expect Felix to fight, either, and look where he’s gone off to,” she argued, gesturing with her injured arm to demonstrate how extremely uninjured it was.

“I agree, he should have stayed here!” Mercedes said cheerfully. “Unfortunately, he can run faster than me. Lie down now, okay?” She poked and prodded at Annette until she was properly laying in the cot. Annette stared up at her unblinkingly. “If you have a bit of a rest, perhaps you can take care of the shallow wounds when they return from the front lines. And you’ll wake up to a victory! Won’t that be nice?”

A nearby cleric called loudly for Mercedes, a note of panic in his voice, and Mercedes looked over with that same complicated nexus of emotions sliding across her face. She absently patted Annette on top of the head in a way that was probably not supposed to feel condescending before she hurried away, and Annette could hear her gently soothing a soldier who was clearly in more dire straits than Annette was, at the moment.

Annette didn’t bother to close her eyes. They ached with a weariness where closing them would just make them ache more, but the adrenaline rushing through her veins confirmed that she wouldn't be able to fall asleep, regardless. She sat up slowly, cautiously casting a glance towards Mercedes, who was fully engrossed in her work with the newly injured soldier. Quickly, Annette swung her legs over the cot, checked to make sure she had her requisite supply of vulneraries and daggers tucked away in her skirt pockets, and broke into a run towards the center of the city.

She probably _couldn’t_ run faster than Mercie, but she had a head start. And regardless, no one chased after her.

The streets of Fhirdiad were complex and confusing. At some point in the last century, some ruling Faerghus monarch had decided to modernize the city, paving long, wide streets that inevitably led to the market plaza in the center of town and eventually snaked up to the palace behind the plaza. But these major arteries of the city were overlaid on the existing roads and alleys and thoroughfares, creating a complicated network of old and new, with shortcuts leading to dead ends leading to crossroads that all, somehow, dumped you out into that central plaza.

Annette had spent much of her childhood certain that the city was too big to ever know and that she would always be lost in it. She had spent much of her time at the School of Sorcery _getting_ lost. But now, returning to the side streets and back alleys, she felt only familiarity, despite how the city had been neglected by Cornelia’s incompetent leadership and transformed into a battleground by Dimitri’s siege. Whatever Annette’s sense of direction otherwise, she at least knew Fhirdiad.

She realized, of course, that a lone mage traveling along active battle lines was in a vulnerable position. So she stuck to side streets, watching for scouts and assassins and dashing towards the front steps of the palace in an erratic, nonintuitive path. Her caution was rewarded – it took her a bit longer to approach the battlefield, but she saw neither enemy soldiers or Cornelia’s cursed automatons along her path.

She turned into a long alleyway behind a row of prominent shops that she knew led out into the back end of the market plaza, close to the palace itself. Debris of all sorts lay scattered along her path, broken boxes and discarded weapons mingling as she picked her way carefully down the alley. The smell of magic hung in the air, and she could hear the clanging of metal against metal in the difference, but thankfully there weren’t any fallen soldiers down this alley, even if the battle was clearly at hand.

The end of the alley gave way into the giant, open arena of the market plaza, although Annette was sure that all the traveling merchants and semi-permanent market stands had long been abandoned or packed away. Reaching the end of the alley, she poked her head around the corner, scanning the landscape. Scorch marks covered abandoned stalls and the walls of buildings, and the ground seemed oddly blackened in places. In the distance, Annette spotted a few of the magical, mechanical dolls holding giant weapons and moving with jerking repetition, but they were fortunately too far away to notice her. Beyond that, the square appeared empty. Annette frowned – she knew this was the final rendezvous point of the army; could it be possible they’d already moved the battle further?

Skittering to the other wall of the alleyway, Annette looked around the other corner. She scanned the edges of the square, until her eyes locked on an opening leading to one of the larger, more prominent streets in Fhirdiad. Sensing movement, she squinted, trying to make out the figures approaching the square from such a distance. Perhaps it was wishful thinking and she needed to run in the other direction as fast as possible, but she could have sworn she could make out a blue banner through the smoke, and the leader at the front seemed to hold a lance, his black armor and cloak stark against the foot soldiers. Annette pressed against the wall and let out a breath. If Dimitri was leading the rest of the army this far into the city, that could only mean –

The bricks above Annette’s head exploded with the impact of a spell, and Annette screamed and barely rolled back into the alleyway before a shower of rubble crashed down where she was standing.

She’d scarcely scrambled back to her feet before the next spell exploded next to her, this time crashing into a pile of boxes and crates, sending them splintering in every direction. Annette covered her head as she was pelted with wooden shrapnel, wincing as she blindly threw out a counterattack, a wind spell that chaotically bounced off the walls of the narrow alley before dissipating into the open square.

“Come now, Miss Dominic, at least I can say I missed on purpose.” Another spell made impact above Annette’s head, and she stumbled backwards, her shoulder throbbing from the previous explosion. “What’s your excuse?”

Annette grimaced and focused on the figure in front of her, the sun blinding her to all but the looming silhouette of an expensive dress lined in dramatic furs. Summoning half a lifetime of her training and studying and practice, Annette found her most powerful spell, and flung her arms forward, a neat braid of green light banding together into a single swooping stream.

She didn’t get to see if it made an impact before Cornelia’s final spell crashed into her. Annette went flying backwards, the magical impact simultaneously propelling her through the air and sinking into her skin. Annette’s shoulder and arm and neck all burned, settling under her skin and coursing through her limbs and across her body. Annette gasped for air, grabbing onto a box to pull herself to her feet and squeezing her eyes shut, waiting for the worst of the pain to subside.

When she opened her eyes, Cornelia had stepped fully into the alleyway. She was an intimidating figure, a full head taller than Annette and dressed in the grandest sorceress robes Annette had ever seen. Her pale skin was practically translucent and her hair whipped out wildly around her face, and as she smiled down at her, Annette could swear her teeth were pointed. She barely seemed human, let alone someone Annette could face in combat. But Annette noted with a kind of petty satisfaction the scrapes along her cheek and rip across the sleeve of the dress. She dearly hoped her spell contributed to at least some of that.

“You always had potential, I’ll give you that,” Cornelia snarled, taking a step closer to Annette and wiping her face with the back of her hand. It just smeared the blood more grotesquely across her cheeks, but her smile was gleeful as she drew more magic, dark light gathering outwards from the center of her palm. She locked eyes with Annette and gave a wild laugh. “But potential won’t save you now, pet. Nothing will save you, now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You flip a lot of levers in this game! Level designers were very into that lever life. I tried to enter into the spirit of lever-flipping as best I could, but then I thought, you know what’s even more fun than levers? Malignant spheres of doom that are controlled by levers. The end result is possibly a little silly, but if you object to a little silliness I very much wonder how you got all the way to chapter 23.
> 
> I guess that, technically, if you marched Annette next directly to her uncle in her paralogue and just left her there, he would technically attack her until she does. (I assume? I have never actually done this.) But narratively, I have a hard time believing he could actually go through with it.
> 
> Yes, I know the character has, like, 4 lines of dialogue total. What can I say! It’s a very well-crafted paralogue and I have _many opinions_ on it.
> 
> Anyhow! Hello, all! I hope you missed me enormously; I’ve missed you all enormously. Writing’s been a bit slow going for me this fall for _numerous dramatic reasons_ , but we’re really winding down with this fic, aren’t we? I’ve always conceptualized the 25th chapter as more of an epilogue, so if you want to think about it that way, the final chapter will be the next update. What???? I’m just constantly screaming at this point.
> 
> Probably a few weeks before the next update; times are pretty busy right now, but I’m hoping the (sort of) last chapter will be a fun one! In the interim, wear your masks, make a plan to vote, check in on your loved ones, take care of yourself. You are good and true and worth diamonds and rubies. Hugs and kisses until then!
> 
> [Follow me on twitter if you'd like!](https://twitter.com/Rose3Writes)


	24. Felix Keeps His Word

Felix slashed his sword a final time, and the automaton crashed to the ground.

Sylvain claimed that they had been harder to defeat before Annette disarmed whatever dark and terrible magic was powering them. Felix could scarcely see how that was possible. Even paired with Ingrid’s powerful battalion of fliers and Sylvain’s command of the cavalry, they had barely been able to take down two of these bloodless monsters since Felix joined them. Still, they seemed pleased to have his extra strength, even if he didn’t bring any extra troops with him. They pressed on, clearing the way for Dimitri and his army as they pushed through the streets of Fhirdiad to the steps of the palace, where Cornelia surely awaited them.

“That was a clean hit,” Sylvain said, drawing up beside Felix where he stood beside the rubble of the metal puppet. He frowned as he scanned Felix, and moved his fingers across his own forehead. “Mostly a clean hit. You want to get that checked out before we move on?”

Felix mimicked Sylvain’s brush against his temple, and felt the blood, sticky and warm, as it collected against his fingers. He scowled at his gloves, streaked red. “I’ll be fine,” he told Sylvain. “There’ll be time to patch up minor injuries once we’ve claimed the throne.”

“It should be soon, now that we’ve thinned out her soldiers – magic or otherwise,” Sylvain said. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder, where Felix could see Byleth and Dimitri leading the bulk of the army down the street to where they stood next to the defeated automatons. Sylvain turned back to Felix, his eyes twinkling in a way that Felix had long learned to distrust. “Annie really came through for us this time, didn’t she? I hope you have some hero’s thank you planned for her tonight; she’s going to –”

It would not be strategically sound to cut down their best officer at the height of their most important battle; Felix knew that. But it was tempting. He was saved from having to make the decision by Byleth, who strode up to them with a calm authority as she raked her eyes across the now-inanimate piles of metal.

“Area secured? And I take it Ingrid’s back to scouting?” she asked, briskly looking over the surrounding carnage.

Sylvain nodded. “She’ll report back once she’s determined the safest path to the palace. Or if there are any more hunks of metal we need to dispose of.”

“I’ve missed your efficiency, Felix,” Byleth said, the closest thing to a compliment she was prone to give. She didn’t dwell on it. She pointed down the wide side street where they had been fighting. “Dimitri has suggested that this would be the best route until we know more from our air scouts,” she said, a hint of a question in her voice.

“Should be,” Sylvain said. He had evidently taken a place of second in command while Felix had been away – or perhaps Byleth just assumed he knew the streets of Fhirdiad better than she did.

Felix frowned, looking down the streets. “Fastest, maybe, but I fear an ambush,” he said. He gestured to the left and right of the street, which fed into alleys that led deeper into the city. “Cornelia’s not stupid; she’s had enough time to learn of our approach. I doubt you could fit a whole flank down one of these alleyways, but if a single assassin gets a lucky shot at the boar – I don’t like it.”

Byleth nodded slowly. “Caution is in our best interest,” she agreed. “Will you two act as advance scouts? Clear the alleyways and we’ll follow after. Be on your guard.”

“Got it,” Sylvain said, signaling to the head of his battalion to take his horse as he dismounted and grabbed a lance. ”I go left, you go right, Fe?”

“Make it quick,” Felix growled in reply, already breaking from the group to scout the first alleyway. The sooner they got the army to the palace doors, the sooner this nightmare would be over.

Felix didn’t consider his concern to be paranoia so much as thoroughness, and he made no apologies for being thorough. So when the first alley was unguarded, and the second, he didn’t consider it a refutation to his plan, but a confirmation that they were proceeding correctly. He ducked into the third alley with confidence, even if he kept his caution. He would never admit it, but after weeks away from their army, there was something enticing about working with a larger group to accomplish his goal.

He ducked down the side alley well ahead of the bulk of the army. Perhaps sending a high-ranking officer on a scouting mission was unconventional, but Byleth knew what she was doing – Felix moved quickly and efficiently on his own, and he would have no trouble clearing the side streets well before Dimitri caught up to him. The sun was low in the sky as he peered down the alleyway, casting eerie shadows that played at odd angles. When Felix saw the silhouette, his first thought was that he had imagined it.

He had his bow drawn before he had time to decide whether the figure was real, and an arrow notched by the time he’d clarified it was. But, blinking into the sun, Felix held back for a moment as he sized up the figure, who appeared to be approaching at a full run. The silhouette was of a full skirt and billowing sleeves – more the outfit of a warlock or gremory, not the sleek outline of a swordsman. The skirt seemed to interfere with running, at that. As the figure stumbled for a second time, Felix began to doubt that this was an Empire scout sent to kill him, unless the Empire was harder up for assassins than he’d thought.

Felix lowered his bow, if not his guard – a clumsy mage was still a dangerous mage, as he knew far too well. He stared into the alleyway, trying to adjust to the late afternoon light and shadow, but he recognized the voice far before he was able to fully piece together what he saw.

“There you are, Felix! I don’t know what you were thinking, running off like that. You know I can’t keep up with you.”

“Mercedes,” Felix said, with just a hint of surprise. “I thought you were in charge of the healing battalion.”

Mercedes slowed to halfhearted jog as she came into light. Her cheeks were pinker than normal, and she was fully scowling at him. She was a remarkably talented healer, but Felix knew for a fact she dragged herself to training at the bare minimum requirement, and was generally uninterested in front lines and running.

“I was overseeing the clerics, yes, until _somebody_ decided to run off to join the front lines after a very exhausting scouting mission,” she said. Her scowl had disappeared into one of her specialty smiles – the kind that always made Felix feel like more of a jerk than if she’d just frowned at him. “I get so nervous when you go rogue like that. I had to catch up and make sure that everyone was going to be okay.”

“I don’t like the idea of an unguarded bishop running through an active battlefield alone, Mercedes,” Felix said, casting a suspicious glance behind her. No one seemed to have followed her.

Mercedes smiled at him sweetly. “Then I _guess_ we’re even, aren’t we?” she asked, her question both honey and poison. “Now, will you catch me up on where we’re at?”

“Troops are thinned out, as are those wretched monsters Cornelia is controlling,” Felix said, tugging Mercedes after him as he walked towards the entrance of the alley and back to the main army. She’d be safer there. “We’re making our way to the palace steps; Cornelia most likely awaits us there. You can join a mage battalion; we have a few in tow, I believe.”

“Wonderful!” Mercedes agreed, falling in step beside him easily enough. “That’s where Annie is, then?”

Felix stopped in his tracks. Mercedes took a few awkward steps forward before realizing he wasn’t following, then turned back around to look at him, tilting her head in confusion – and suspicion.

“What,” Felix said.

Mercedes’s eyes narrowed. “Felix,” she said softly. “Annie _is_ with you, right? She caught up with you guys?”

“When . . . she was injured. When did she leave?” Felix asked, feeling his entire body go numb.

“Felix,” Mercedes said again. Her voice sounded strangled, both pleading and angry.

Felix turned on his heel and ran deeper into the alleyway. He knew it would inevitably lead him to the heart of Fhirdiad. It was possible that Mercedes called after him, to stop him, to warn him, but he didn’t listen.

He was running blindly, and he knew that. It was impossible to know which of the winding, twisting back streets of Fhirdiad she would have taken to try to catch up to the army. He pushed away the possibility that she hadn’t taken a back street at all, that she had been foolish enough or desperate enough to try to charge after him down a main thoroughfare, that Cornelia or one of her monsters or one of her goons had outmatched her as easily as they found her –

A streak of green light flashing above his head in the distance pulled Felix out of his spiraling thoughts, and he stumbled to a halt, squinting up at the sky above him. It was a wind spell, he was sure of it – one that had badly missed its mark. It was possible, he supposed, that Cornelia had a mage or three that specialized in wind. It was less plausible they’d be casting, successfully or otherwise, given that the spell appeared to come from the opposite direction of Dimitri and the rest of the army. But in Felix’s experience, it was even less possible that Annette’s spells would miss, unless something had gone incredibly wrong.

But Felix didn’t have time to calculate possibilities. He took a sharp angle down yet another side street and redirected towards the fading light, pushing himself to run faster.

He realized where he was headed shortly before he arrived at the end of that street. In a way, it seemed inevitable – half the roads in Fhirdiad led to the market square eventually. He knew the square well – he had spent countless afternoons there as a teenager visiting Fhirdiad with his father on diplomatic business, dragging Sylvain away from girls and Ingrid away from snacks and occasionally participating in an informal sword tournament in the corner of the square. Cornelia’s rule had whittled the market away to nothing, probably even before she had filled it with bloodless monsters that obeyed her every whim, and now it lay eerily empty, the crowds of merchants and visitors long gone to safer corners of the city.

Felix scanned the market square, desperately on the lookout for any sign of Annette or her magic. He swung his gaze across the square until a flash of motion caught his attention. He stared directly across the empty market plaza to yet another alley, and for a moment it was if time froze in horrifying clarity. 

Purple and green lights flashed in the alleyway, obscured by smoke that was faintly glowing, the sure sign of magic. Felix’s worst fears were confirmed when Cornelia herself stumbled backwards out of the alley, already flinging more magic into the smoke.

Even from a distance, Felix could tell Cornelia had been on the wrong end of some rough fighting. She stood at a disjointed angle, the sure sign of some injury. Her hair fanned out wildly around her face, and there were rips in the fur of her elaborate gremory robes. But most of all, Cornelia’s expression had none of the self-satisfied amusement Felix had come to associate with her. It was a mask of pain and anger, and her movements were reflexive and desperate. Felix knew the army was still behind him, navigating the maze of Fhridiad streets, and as far as he understood Byleth had sent few foot soldiers ahead to actually engage in battle. So there were very few options for what, or who, had happened to Cornelia in the last hour.

Felix’s educated guess was almost immediately confirmed as a battered, exhausted, furious Annette emerged from the smoke of the alleyway, firing a barrage of wind spells with both hands. If only one out of every three spells actually got near enough to Cornelia to hit her, they pushed her back into the open plaza, and Annette nimbly jumped to the side as Cornelia launched another attack in her direction.

Felix broke into a run at the first sight of Annette, pushing himself across the square with a hand on his blade and brutal sense of purpose coursing through his veins. Annette didn’t see him, she was now backing away from Cornelia towards the edge of the marketplace. Felix wondered if she was plotting an escape, if it was even possible to outrun magic. Cornelia, for her part, had her back to Felix, stalking towards Annette with a menacing slowness. Felix had the element of surprise on his side, not to mention the element of pure, unadulterated outrage. If he could just outrun her next spell, outpace her next attack on Annette, he could end this entire, horrible nightmare once and for all.

Felix drew his sword. He planted his feet with purpose and years of training.

Cornelia threw her hand out behind her easily, even carelessly, and an invisible force slammed into Felix with all the power of a demonic beast, sending him careening across the square and slamming into a nearby wall.

Felix groaned, pulling himself to his feet. He could hear Annette screaming his name somewhere in the back of his head, but he could no longer tell whether that was real or imagined. He raised his sword and turned towards Cornelia again, ready to strike.

She turned towards him, this time, and he saw the slow, smug smile as she flicked her wrist towards him, sending an amorphous ball of dark purple light in his direction.

Felix flung himself to the side – slower than usual, but faster than most. The trajectory of the spell should have gone past him. Instead, the disjointed sphere contorted on itself as it got near him, seeming to grow blunt, gelatinous arms that reached out towards him.

One of those rough arms took hold, sinking into his arm, scalding him. The magic redirected at contact, slamming into him at point-blank range, sinking into his arm and his chest and his heart with an audible sizzle.

Felix stumbled back, dizzy. He was certain Annette was crying his name now.

“Ah, the other thorn in my side,” Cornelia greeted him, her voice mocking. “I blame myself for you. If you hadn’t been following that girl around with those big dopey eyes of yours, I’d have realized much more quickly that you’re too stupid to ever abandon your precious prince.”

“Get . . . away . . . from her,” Felix growled, raising his sword and slightly lunging back on his heel, ready to strike.

The magic seemed to appear from behind him, this time, slamming into his back and knocking Felix to his knees. Burning pain shot through Felix’s shoulder blades as his sword clattered to the ground.

“A knight to the end, I suppose,” Cornelia said as Felix fumbled for his sword. “Runs in the family, I’m told.”

“I’ll kill you where you stand,” Felix snarled, finally grasping his sword and planting a foot to stand. Waves of nausea rushed through him, and for a moment he was so disoriented he thought he imagined the gentle hand resting on his shoulder.

“Surrender now, Cornelia,” Annette said, her very voice soothing Felix's entire body the way Cornelia’s dark magic seemed to torment him. “As we speak, the Kingdom army approaches.”

“Once they get to the palace, it’s over,” Felix called out, trying to suppress a cough mid-sentence. He wrapped an arm around Annette’s waist and tried to pull himself more to his feet, but the world still spun, and his sword arm shook.

“I’m surprised you didn’t attempt a surprise attack, Annette darling. You’re usually so _angry_ ,” Cornelia said, looking more amused than anything else. “Have you given up on any chance of landing a hit on me, lamb?”

“I don’t need to fight you; you’ve already lost,” Annette said. She wrapped her arm more fully around Felix’s back, and if her voice shook, her grip was steady.

“Maybe in the long run,” Cornelia murmured, her eyes flashing in anger. “But there’s no reason I won’t take you both down with me.”

At this, she raised her hands and flung them forward in unison, two twin spirals of dark magic hurtling towards them. Felix dropped his sword and threw his hand out, instinctively drawing Annette closer to him but too weak to jump in front of her. Even he knew his attempted defense was a useless gesture. 

It didn’t matter. Tightening her own grip around Felix, Annette waved her hand in front of her, chanting an incantation under her breath that sounded like a distorted, disjointed melody to Felix’s ears.

The magic skirted past them, catching Felix’s jacket sleeve and singeing the edges of Annette’s hair. But the brunt of the spell seemed to dissipate in front of Felix’s eyes, or bounced away at an odd angle before catching up to them. He blinked, and realized a glimmering echo of light was fading around them, some after-effect of a counterspell that Annette had managed, working as a shield that Felix could only perceive when he wasn’t entirely looking.

Annette stumbled back from the recoil of colliding magic, and Felix tightened his grip around her. He could no longer tell whether he was holding her up or she was holding him up. Perhaps it was both.

But even if Annette could defend, Felix was helpless to fight, and Cornelia knew it. As her magic dissipated into the air, she barely looked surprised. Instead, her lips curled into a wicked smile, and she laughed.

“Did I teach you how to block that, pet?” she asked Annette. Magic was lazily curling around her fingers once more. “That was foolish of me, I suppose – but then, I _did_ think you could have been a delightful ally, if you hadn’t been so lovestruck.”

She fired again, her spell faster and this time, more pointed around the ends. Annette’s momentary shield flew up just fast enough to deflect the blow, but her knees buckled as the spell ricocheted in another direction. Felix realized with a momentary flash of horror and certainty that it wasn’t Cornelia’s spells that were sapping Annette’s energy – it was the counterspells themselves.

“You did teach me that; I’m grateful for your tutelage,” she yelled, her hands glowing green with a wind spell. “You told me once that the secret to magic is to realize that everything bends towards death, to follow that trajectory. Do you remember?”

She threw the wind spell the way Felix might hurl a tomahawk, viciously and precisely. Cornelia sidestepped it easily. “Are your last words going to be a magic lesson, then?” she snarled. “Fitting – theory seems to be all you’ve ever been good for.”

“You’re wrong, you know. Fundamentally,” Annette said. “Maybe that’s the way the universe bends – who am I to judge the universe? But people – people cast spells. Humans. And humans don’t move towards decay and despair. They move towards life, towards recovery, towards one another.”

She punctuated this with a series of attacks, and although even Felix could tell they wouldn't seriously damage Cornelia, the sorceress seemed caught off guard as three separate spirals of wind flew past her, narrowly missing her on either side, the third one clipping her shoulder just enough to make her wince.

Her lips curled into a cross between a grimace and a grin. “You really do know a lot of pretty words, pet,” she growled, the magic at her fingertips flickering wildly. “You could have a future as a queen once that duke of yours expires – which won’t be very long now, from the look of him.”

“How _dare_ –” Felix started, struggling to pull himself to his feet, but his legs felt strangely disconnected to his body, and instead he broke into a rather unhelpful coughing fit. Annette tightened her hand on him, her fingers digging into his shoulder as her nose twitched in what Felix had long come to recognize as annoyance.

“You mock my family, you mock my friendships, you mock the people I love – that’s all you know how to do, Cornelia. Nothing _matters_ to you, except power, and manipulation, and cruelty,” Annette spat, pushing herself up to full height. “Where are your allies now? Where are the people you threatened, and tortured, and forced to follow you? You’re alone – you’ve always been alone.”

Cornelia laughed at this, low and mocking. “Are you trying to tell me you’re going to win because you have the power of _love_ on your side?” she asked. “Are you really so devoted to fairy tales?”

“Well, it’s more beautiful when you put it like that, I’ll give you that,” Annette said slowly. “But I was going to go with the fact I have an army. And our army has a king. And that king has a really, really big lance and is standing right behind you.”

Annette threw her final cast of magic as she said this, and it flew past Cornelia’s shoulder as she quickly twisted out of the way. As Cornelia moved out of the spell’s trajectory, an arrow caught her shoulder, as if Ashe had predicted which direction she would be turning.

Maybe he had. Felix had seen him make much more unlikely shots in the past.

Cornelia whirled, clutching her arm, to see the full force of the Kingdom army bearing down upon her. It was true that Dimitri was charging at the front, Areadbhar drawn and ready to strike, but Byleth followed close at his heels, barking orders to the surrounding troops as they spread out in positions of relative safety away from Cornelia’s potential magic, ready to swoop in at a moment’s notice to disarm her or to fight.

A strange, inhuman noise tore from Cornelia’s throat, pain and fury mixing with an incantation for dark, dangerous magic. Felix realized the latter too late, as her hands glowed an unsightly dark purple spreading upwards to her elbows. He pulled himself up, to scream at Dimitri, to warn him, to try lunging forward, but Cornelia turned at the last minute and sent the spell flying in the opposite direction, a final, parting gift to Annette and Felix before the army was upon her.

Looking back, Felix would always claim he acted on instinct, his muscles moving on their own in a moment of pure reaction. But he saw the spell flying towards them, aimed directly for Annette’s heart. He saw the flickering, unsteady barrier appearing in front of them, weak and shaky and cast by a mage at the end of her magic reserves. He heard Annette’s tiny, horrified gasp for air as she tried to pull together one final counterspell to keep them alive.

And if Felix was being honest, it didn’t matter if he’d moved on pure reaction or if he’d had a thousand years to weigh his options. He always would have taken the same path.

Lunging sideways, drawing strength from fear and adrenaline, Felix slammed into Annette, his arms tightening around her waist as he pushed her out of the way. She flew to the side, out of the range of the spell, and he fell after her as if in slow motion.

The spell slammed into Felix’s shoulder with enough force to knock him backwards, and his grip on Annette broke as he fell, away from her, before slamming into the pavement beneath him. The world spun when he tried to open his eyes, and the pain was spreading from his shoulder down his arm and into his chest, making it difficult to breathe and impossible to move.

“It’s been a long time, hasn’t it, your highness? You’ve grown . . .”

Cornelia’s voice seemed far away and distorted, as if the words were coming to Felix out of order. He struggled to sit up, to even open his eyes, but it was if his limbs were no longer connected to him.

Hands wrapped around his shoulders, digging into his upper arms, the fingers small and shaky. Felix felt Annette heft him up with more strength than he would have thought possible, dragging him backwards across the plaza. He opened his eyes with some effort, but she was looking frantically over her shoulder, not at him, abject panic across her face.

“–nette,” he mumbled, but she didn’t hear him. The overly bright sky faded to shadow as she pulled him into the alley and dropped him with an unceremonious _thud_.

Felix made a sound that might have been _oww_ but Annette didn’t appear to notice or care. She flung herself to the ground, kneeling over him and frantically ripping at the buttons of his jacket to get to the magic wounds beneath. She sucked air through her teeth, hard, and it was obvious she did not like what she was seeing.

“I'm – I’m fine, Annie,” Felix said, coughing between words. “Go find. . . Dimitri.”

Her face was coming into focus now. It was drawn and pale and – Felix realized with regret – tear-stained as she looked down on him.

“Don’t talk. Stop talking,” she said frantically, moving her hands lightly over the injuries as if she was running her finger down a tome to find the right spell. “Goddess, Felix, what we you _thinking_ ,”

“Did she hurt you?” Felix asked. He knew the answer. Annette looked like one of Cornelia’s bloodless beasts had slammed her into the ground. His fingers curled into a weak fist as he imagined what the battle must have looked like before he arrived.

“Dark magic buries itself deep,” Annette muttered, as if she hadn’t heard him. “Rudimentary topical treatments generally mask deeper injuries, so the patient should first be assessed for –”

“Annie,” Felix said, louder this time, lifting his head up. He could feel magic at the tips of her fingers. “What are you doing?”

She pressed her fingers against him and he felt the magic sink into him. It felt strange, as if Annette were running her fingers along his bones instead of his skin. He was used to healing magic stitching muscle and nerve and bone back together, but this was different. It was if he didn’t know where the pain was until the magic found it, and then it burst before fading, sending jolts down his arms and through his ribcage.

Annette gasped, gripping his shoulder momentarily, before weakly pushing herself up again and setting her mouth in a straight line as she repeated the process of running her hands across his injuries, searching.

“You don’t have the – the energy for this, Annette,” Felix gasped at her. He reached up to push one of her hands away, but he was too weak to even do that, and he settled for grasping feebly at her fingers. “I’ll be fine once – the healers find us.”

Annette pressed her fingers into his other shoulder, recreating that strange, deep, painful sense of healing, close to his heart this time. “I’m not letting you – there isn’t – stop _talking_ , Felix,” she said, drawing a short, shuddering breath between each phrase. “I’m fine. You’re going to be fine. We’re going to be –”

Felix felt a final rush of magic shoot down his arm, wild and uncontrolled compared to the careful, studied magic he was used to from Annette. Her hands slackened around him, and Annette pitched forward, landing on top of him, her arms sliding away from him limply.

“No – _no_ , Annette, don’t,” Felix begged, not even sure what he was asking her at the moment.

“Felix,” she whispered, moving her hands up to clutch his jacket, and his heart leapt to hear her still speaking. “I wanted to save. . . I’m . . . sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Felix said, and he broke into another coughing fit, the healing magic already fading from his bloodstream. “Don’t. Just stay awake. Just stay with me, okay?”

“That sounds nice,” Annette agreed faintly, tilting her chin into him. “That’s what . . . I want. That’s what I’ve. . . always wanted.”

Felix could feel her hands slipping again. Her breathing was shallow and her face was so pale, and the world around him was spinning again. He wrapped his arms around her as best he could, burying one gloved hand in her hair, and closed his eyes and waited for the spinning to stop.

Somewhere in the distance, he heard Cornelia speaking again, something about fairy tales and wishes coming true and family, and he must have misheard her, must have been confusing her with someone else, but he couldn’t concentrate enough to put the words together in a way that made sense.

He refocused, turning his attention to Annette’s breathing, her head resting on his shoulder, her chest rising and falling with the slightest movement.

It reminded him: She was alive. She was alive. She was alive.

There were footsteps around them, at some point. There was shouting. But all Felix heard, as the world drifted away, was Annette promising him that they would be fine.

***

The world was dark and silent for a long time, and then everything was too bright, and still Annette didn’t sing.

Felix squeezed his eyes shut and listened for the music that was supposed to be there, for the song that had followed him in his dreams for his entire adult life, whether or not the singer was near him. He couldn’t hear it, and he couldn’t understand why. Everything was too silent. Everything was too bright.

Felix opened his eyes.

He’d been in the infirmary wing at the palace at Fhirdiad a handful of times in his childhood, for bloody noses and wounded pride. By the time northern Faerghus was engulfed in its seemingly endless civil war, Felix was on the front lines, but no one was letting a Fraldarius near the castle.

His first sign that they had won, then, was a memory from childhood of a painting of the goddess that hung by the entry of the infirmary. He had stared into her eyes while Dimitri tugged at his sleeve and begged him to stop crying and told him that everything would be alright. To see her again felt like much the same message, perhaps from the same person.

Felix pushed himself up to look around the infirmary, only somewhat regretting his decision as pain pulsed through him from the movement. He was tucked away in a corner of the infirmary, as close to a private room as the open space would allow. Looking out across the room, he saw a flood of clerics milling about, moving between patients at a steady, calm pace that implied many injuries had already been stabilized. He slowly turned towards the nearby wall, only to realize his was not the only patient bed in this corner of the room.

Annette lay propped up by too many pillows, unconscious, her face still too pale and with a bruise blossoming across her cheek. She murmured something inaudible and turned towards him slightly without waking.

Felix pushed himself upright immediately, ignoring the pain in his arms and shoulder and the searing ache in his head. Annette didn’t stir, and he leaned towards her, reaching his hand out to touch her, to feel her pulse, to do anything to make sure she would come back to him –

A firm, if dainty, hand grasped Felix’s shoulder and pushed him back down against the pillows.

“No no _no_ you don’t, Felix Fraldarius,” Mercedes scolded, appearing behind him as if some unholy – or deeply holy – sense had alerted her that a patient was misbehaving. “You’ve been out for two days and the first thing you do is try to reopen all your wounds? _No_. You can lie there quietly and think about how pretty Annie is; she’ll be awake soon enough.”

“She’ll be okay?” Felix asked, looking up and Mercedes and wondering when was the last time she’d gotten more than twenty minutes of sleep in a row. The healers always had it worst, when the battles were over. “Was it magic exhaustion?”

Mercedes frowned, already moving away from Felix to fluff Annette’s pillows, an intervention Felix had never quite understood, but that seemed very important to her in the moment.

“Magic exhaustion, yes, but also physical exhaustion, a couple of broken ribs, lacerations across her back – and oh yes, how could I forget, enough dark magic running through her to kill a soldier twice her size.” Mercedes punched the pillow with a little more force than was strictly necessary and gently moved it underneath Annette’s head.

Felix winced. “She’ll be okay, though, right?”

Mercedes’s frown softened, a bit, and Felix for once didn’t mind that she looked at him like a troublesome younger sibling as she walked over and started the same useless process on his pillows.

“She’ll be fine, Felix,” she said, almost kindly. “She’ll be up and walking before you, that’s for sure. Would you like to hear the list of _your_ ailments?”

“Maybe later,” Felix muttered. He leaned towards Annette and tried to grab her hand, but she was too far away. Mercedes swatted at him.

“Good, I don’t have time,” she said. “If _either_ of you runs away from me like that in Enbarr, I will turn into a ghost and haunt you forever, do you understand me?”

“Enbarr?” Felix asked, rolling over to look at her, confused.

“I guess you wouldn’t know yet,” Mercedes said, nodding to herself. “We took the capital, Felix. Dimitri’s coronation will be at the end of the week. Faerghus is unified again.”

“Onward to the Empire,” Felix muttered to himself.

“Onward to dreamland, for now,” Mercedes said, patting one of the pillows propping Felix up and coming dangerously close to patting his head in the process. “You need all the rest you can get or we’ll be pushing you to Enbarr in a wheelbarrow.”

Felix made some noncommittal noise to indicate he would consider her recommendation and turned his attention back towards Annette. She slept on, squeaking slightly in her sleep in something between a snore and a murmur. Felix’s hand twitched to reach out to her, although he knew he’d probably fall out of bed if tried to lean that far.

The infirmary bed he was laying on gave a sudden lurch to the side, and he looked back, surprised. Mercedes gave the bed another hip-check, sending it centimeters closer to Annette, and walked away without a word, shaking her head in a way that made Felix feel very judged indeed.

He reached out his hand and barely managed to grasp Annette’s. She mumbled something about swamp beasties in her sleep, her fingers unresponsive to his touch but her pulse stronger than he expected. Felix tightened his grip around her hand and took what felt like his first breath in days.

Sleep found him sooner than he expected, after that.

***

Mercedes was right, as was usually the case. It was less than a day later when Annette finally woke up, curling her fingers around Felix’s and sleepily blinking her eyes open and smiling at him for a moment of perfect peace before she realized he was in an infirmary bed and she bolted straight up in a panic. Reminders that she was also in an infirmary bed did little to calm her down – Felix suspected his bedside manner was lacking in that moment, as in all moments – and it took the full force of Mercedes’s mothering to convince Annette to lie back down rather than throwing herself on Felix to examine his injuries herself.

As it was, she asked Mercedes nonstop questions about Felix’s injuries for the better part of an hour, and when Mercedes left them alone to check on other soldiers, Annette developed a full new set of questions to ask Felix personally. Felix could hardly believe she was the same fragile, pale figure that had clung to unconsciousness hours before, or clung to him days before. Annette didn’t seem to understand the concept of a transitional recovery period. He rather envied that about her.

Around question twenty-three (“Would you say your bones feel more _hollow_ or _fiery_?”), Felix reached out and took Annette’s hand again. She looked down in surprise.

“You don’t need to worry about me, Annie,” Felix said, interlocking their fingers carefully. “You got hit just as badly as I did out there, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Annette frowned down at their hands. “I haven’t forgotten,” she said quietly. “I’m going to be fine, Felix.”

Felix leaned towards her, but although Annette had cajoled Mercedes into pushing their beds even closer together, the distance between their beds was still such that he would have toppled to the ground if he tried to close the gap between them. He settled for raising her hand to his lips and kissing her knuckles. He could see the scratch marks and bruises that the healers had no time to attend to.

“We’re both going to be fine,” he repeated, kissing her hand again. “For the first time, I believe it.”

***

Mercedes was also right that Annette recovered at a faster pace than Felix. She was cleared to attend Dimitri’s coronation days later, flanked by Mercedes and Ashe to keep an eye on her in case she needed an escort back to her room. Felix still had trouble standing without feeling his legs give out, let alone walking, and Mercedes looked very apologetic when she told him it would be best if he continued to rest, despite the importance of the occasion.

Felix assured Mercedes, and then Annette, and then Ashe, that he did not want to attend the coronation and did not need to attend the coronation and would be perfectly happy hearing about the coronation from Annette, or better yet, never hearing about the coronation at all. He briefly faltered from such a claim when Annette stopped by his room in the infirmary beforehand, wearing some gauzy blue dress that made her look like royalty and clinging to Ashe’s arm for balance. But between the overly apologetic smile Ashe gave him and the dozens of kisses Annette planted on his forehead while lamenting that he couldn’t join them, Felix couldn’t find it in him to be particularly upset about how things had turned out. It was hard to be upset about much of anything when Annette was so happy.

“I just can’t believe Dimitri is actually going to be king,” she sniffled, wiping at her eyes with the backs of her hands. “We knew him when he was just a prince, Felix.”

“That’s generally how it goes,” Felix said. “Get out of here; you’re going to miss everything.”

He would never admit how quickly he missed her when she was gone.

***

Felix grumbled to anyone who would listen, which was mostly Annette, that Mercedes was overly draconian when it came to medical clearance, but secretly he knew that she allowed him to leave the infirmary almost as soon as he could walk on his own two feet. The wait felt like agony, but it was only a few days after the coronation when Felix finally sat on the edge of the infirmary bed, pulling his boots back on before shrugging on his jacket, determined to get to the training grounds and see if he could at least remember how to hold a sword before dinner.

He was adjusting the buckles on his second boot when he heard the polite cough next to him. Felix looked up with glare out of habit, and his glare only intensified out of recognition.

“Do I call you ‘Your Majesty’ now, or what?” he asked, returning to his boot.

“Mercedes says you’re well enough to see more visitors now?” Dimitri asked. Being king had hardly changed his appearance – if anything, he looked practically casual without his formal cloak and with his hair pulled back halfway. “I can come back later if you want,” he added.

“No use of that; I’m relocating ,” Felix said. He was out of boot-related tasks but he kept his eyes firmly on the ground. “I’m surprised you had to wait. I didn’t think kings needed permission to go where they pleased.”

“Even a king would be a fool to pick a fight with Mercedes,” Dimitri said. “I’m hoping to start my rule by choosing my battles sensibly.”

Felix chuckled darkly at this. “You should appoint her as a court diplomat when this is all over. Frighten everyone into submission,” he suggested.

Dimitri outright laughed, which was a strange and nostalgic thing to hear. “I’ll pair the two of you together,” he added, leaning into the joke. “Borderline tyranny.”

Felix rolled his eyes. When he finally looked up, Dimitri was still smiling at his own dumb joke.

Felix looked away again. He almost reached for a sword beside him, but Mercedes had a strict, and deeply unfair, no-swords-in-the-infirmary policy, so nothing was there.

“I’m glad you’re well,” Dimitri said finally, just when the silence was becoming unbearable. “And Annette. We took a walk this morning. She seems well.”

“Annette’s always had a remarkable knack for quick recovery,” Felix said. “Perhaps she could have taken Cornelia on by herself; she’s strong enough. From what I understand she’s been studying dark magic somewhat while . . . while in Dominic.”

“Ah,” Dimitri said, and Felix waited for the next sentence, but it never came.

“I’m – I’m glad she didn’t have to fight Cornelia by herself,” Felix said finally, realizing it was his turn to try to fill the silence. “I’m glad she wasn’t alone.”

“Annette seems very happy to have you by her side,” Dimitri said helpfully, and Felix suddenly very much wondered what they’d discussed on their walk that morning. “I’m sure she was happy to have you there in that moment.”

“That’s not what I mean, don’t be dense,” Felix said. He stood up now, taking a moment to acclimate to the feeling of standing. His legs held for the first time in days. “I’m glad you were there for her – for us. For once in your life you had good timing.”

“I’m . . . I’m very glad of it, my friend,” Dimitri said, clapping his hand on Felix’s shoulder, and for a horrifying moment Felix thought Dimitri might start tearing up. “There was no other place I would have been.”

“You were supposed to be at the palace steps,” Felix muttered, shaking Dimitri’s hand away. “I’m not sure how you found us at all.”

“Well. We rerouted,” Dimitri confessed. “Once we heard from Mercedes. Seizing the palace seemed less important than finding you, in the moment. Claude spotted the magic and – well, we had to stop Cornelia, didn’t we?”

Felix gave a derisive snort. “Fool. You could have easily defeated her, once you’d claimed the palace.”

“Perhaps,” Dimitri said. He stepped aside to let Felix walk by him, to finally leave the infirmary on his own two feet. As Felix passed, he added softly, “You would have done the same.”

Felix stopped, looking back at Dimitri. He felt he should say something to that – tell him he was wrong, call him sentimental, point out it was a fine time for him to have finally learned that lesson.

“I won’t go easy on you, now that you’re king, just because we’ve known each other for so long,” he finally said. “I hope you know that.”

Dimitri smiled, and Felix scowled in response out of habit. “I’ve always known that,” he said with a nod. “And I’ve always wanted that. I’m glad. . . I’m glad to see you on your feet, friend.”

“Meet me at the training grounds when you’re not caught up with whatever diplomatic nonsense you have to do these days,” Felix said bluntly, turning to walk away. “I’ll make you regret it soon enough.”

He half expected Dimitri to rat him out to Mercedes, or worse, Annette, but Felix made it through a solid half-hour on the training grounds without any mages showing up to explain in careful medical detail why he was the stupidest person alive. Then Ingrid showed up. And Ingrid didn’t need medical training to find reasons that Felix was the stupidest person alive.

“Weren’t you almost dead like twelve hours ago?” she asked, very little concern in her voice as she carefully selected a lance from the weapons rack.

“Got better. You wanna spar?” Felix asked.

Ingrid gave him a calculating look before lashing out quickly and hitting the back of his knee with the blunt end of her lance. Felix stumbled forward; balance was still a problem for him.

“I’d prefer a challenge, thanks – I’ll wait for Sylvain to show up,” she said brightly. Felix scowled at her. Ingrid had always been a bit of a sore winner, especially when she was right about things. “Have you visited Gilbert yet?” she asked, leaning on her lance and looking at Felix with nosy curiosity.

“Ah. No. How’s he doing?” Felix asked with an involuntary grimace. Annette had given a full rundown of the casualties in the army, and that of course included her father. Gustave had been moved from the infirmary to his own private room and had been allowed to attend the coronation ceremony, but Annette had a long list of reasons to be concerned about his long-term recovery. Between two-months imprisonment and a lance wound that had come remarkably close to piercing his heart, Gustave Dominic had a long road ahead of him before he was fully recovered.

“I mean, I haven’t _heard_ anything, beyond Dimitri fretting,” Ingrid said. “But he’s your father-in-law. You should probably go see him.”

Felix winced. “Do I have to?”

“They’re your family now, Felix,” Ingrid said. He must have looked unconvinced by this line of reasoning, because she quickly added, “And it’ll make Annette happy.”

“I’ll figure out other ways to make her happy,” Felix muttered, but he was already heading to the weapons rack to put his sword away.

“Well, I’m not sparring with you, and I’m not letting Sylvain spar with you, so you might as well go do _something_ useful with yourself,” Ingrid said, walking after him cheerfully.

“I’m surprised you’re not telling me to rest and recover,” Felix said as he slid the practice sword back into place on the weapons rack.

“Why? You’ll be fine,” Ingrid said. “One minor near-death experience doesn’t mean you should just sit around doing nothing.”

“I’ve missed you, Ing,” Felix said, using sarcasm to hide how sincere he was being. “Hit Sylvain extra hard for me.”

“Always,” she said, pushing him lightly by the shoulder blades to nudge him towards the training ground entrance. “Try to say at least one polite thing when you see Gilbert; it’ll be good practice.”

Gustave’s room was close to the infirmary, Felix found out after cornering and questioning a handful of clerics and soldiers until he found one who knew what was going on. Felix had grown up visiting the castle frequently, sometimes for entire summers, but he still didn’t fully have a handle on its layout. Still, it was fairly obvious from the surrounding finery of the hallway that Gustave had been given a place of honor for his recovery. At any rate, Felix thought darkly as he stalked through the hallway past lush tapestries embroidered with Loog and his knights, it would be better than the castle dungeons.

Two figures stood outside a room at the end of the hall, and for a moment Felix wondered if Gustave was popular enough to have a line of visitors. But as he got closer, he realized that Byleth and Fantine were speaking in low voices to one another, and neither seemed particularly impatient to go into the room.

“Felix, dear, you’re up and about!” Fantine exclaimed as he approached, looking truly delighted to see him. She had visited the infirmary frequently over the past week, but he suspected those visits were primarily motivated by Annette. He was still not used to people being delighted to see _him_. “It was quite touch and go for a bit there, wasn’t it?” she added.

Felix shrugged as an answer. “Afternoon Fantine. Professor.” He looked towards the door. “I came to see how Gustave was doing. Is he seeing visitors right now, or. . .?”

“Annette’s with him right now,” Fantine explained. “Byleth was just going over a plausible itinerary with me for when the army leaves Fhirdiad. We want to make sure he’s able to prioritize the most important things while still getting adequate rest.”

“With you?” Felix asked, his eyebrows knitting together. “Are you coming with us back to Garreg Mach?” Annette would be happy, at least, he figured. Or maybe she wouldn’t. Having _both_ parents on the front lines of a war seemed . . .

“I suppose no one’s filled you in,” Byleth said, interrupting his thoughts. “Gustave is staying behind in Fhirdiad. His condition is too precarious to lead a battalion, but there is no one better to oversee the restoration of the city and handle his majesty’s affairs while we’re on the front lines in the Empire.”

“His injuries were that serious?” Felix asked, surprised. “But I thought – the army was barely functional without him, Byleth!” Somewhere in the back of his mind, Ingrid smacked him for tactlessness, but it was true.

Byleth gave him an enigmatic smile, which he supposed meant she wasn’t about to demote him for sheer rudeness. “It is true we felt the absence of Sir Gustave most pointedly,” she said, as if she were describing something much more benign than the absolute chaos the army fell into after Grondor. “But I think you’ll find we’ve found our footing to be a much more efficient operation in the time you’ve been gone. Besides,” she added, her eyes glinting with something that almost resembled amusement. “I’ve found Hilda to be _quite_ talented at managing an army and its resources. Claude had promised he can cajole her into working an extra few months, for the good of the continent and all.”

“I cannot believe that is true,” Felix said, thinking back to his school days, where he once spotted Hilda taking a nap while standing in the middle of choir practice.

“I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,” Byleth said, unconcerned. “But between her logistical skill and Claude’s additional Alliance battalions, we’re back to having a functioning army.”

“And don’t you see, dear, the king will need people overseeing logistics up here just as much. He leads a whole kingdom, not just one army,” Fantine said, smiling at Felix much more brightly. “I tried to convince Annette that she could stay behind as well, and help me with my research, but she was adamant in her refusal.”

“Good,” Felix replied before he could help himself. He added, ”Your research?”

“We found some Cornelia’s notes and research during our sweep of the castle,” Byleth explained. “Some of the implications are . . . disturbing. I’ve asked Fantine to stay in Fhirdiad to help coordinate a research team to examine them further.”

“Disturbing how?” Felix asked. Byleth frowned at him thoughtfully.

“I’ll be putting together a full report, but I suspect Cornelia’s crimes go beyond treason,” she said shortly. “It may extend into the heart of the Empire itself.”

Before Felix could point out that was cryptic even for Byleth, the door swung open and Annette walked out.

“Felix!” she exclaimed, shutting the door behind her with more enthusiasm than was strictly appropriate for a patient’s room. “I thought I wouldn’t see you until dinner.”

“Ingrid wouldn’t let me – Ingrid suggested that I pay your father a visit,” Felix explained. “Is he well enough to see people?”

“Just family,” Annette replied automatically. Her eyes lit up in an epiphany. “But I guess you qualify!” she added quickly. “He should still be awake; I’m sure he’d love to see you.”

Felix very much doubted that, but Annette was quickly opening the door and ushering him in, and he didn’t have time to think of a reason to come back later.

Which is how he ended up sitting rigidly at Gustave Dominic’s bedside, neither of them entirely sure how to continue the conversation.

“I hope you . . . have a swift recovery,” Felix finally said, although he’d probably said that already.

“The goddess has shown benevolence for me to live at all,” Gustave said, his voice as rough and gravelly as always. “She shall bestow healing as she sees fit.”

“Right,” Felix said, not exactly to agree, but to have something to say. “I should. . . I’ll let you rest, then.”

“Are you planning to stay married to my daughter?” Gustave asked as Felix stood to go. Felix flinched and turned to him in surprise.

“I mean . . . yes, that’s the plan. We were planning to stay married to each other,” he said, glancing at Gustave suspiciously. The man merely looked thoughtful, however.

“A strange set of circumstances,” he said, almost to himself. “You are married in the eyes of the goddess, I suppose, but everything about the ceremony, from the blessing to the vows, was under false pretense. I don’t know what I would advise Annette as the proper action.”

“Did she ask?” Felix said, legitimately surprised.

Gustave shook his head. “She doesn’t, generally. Not anymore.”

Felix considered leaving without saying anything, or pointing out that there was a reason for that. But Ingrid’s lecture still rang in his ears, and on rare occasions, he did try to follow her advice.

“If it makes a difference,” he said slowly, crossing his arms. “There wasn’t anything false about those vows. Maybe I didn’t know how much I meant them when I said them, or in what way, but I still meant every word. My life is hers. I don’t care much about what the goddess has to say about most things, but at the end of the day, the goddess would find me honest.”

Gustave was silent for just long enough that Felix wondered if he’d managed to offend him regardless. He was just starting to decide whether he cared either way when the knight spoke.

“Your father used to call you strange, you know. Not unkindly. But that’s the word he would use,” he said, looking at Felix as if for the first time in months. “I always thought he meant obstinate, or headstrong. But I think, now, that what he really meant was that you are downright unfathomable. Just when I think I understand you, you utterly confound everything I thought I understood.”

“I . . . thank you, I guess?” Felix ventured. “I can leave, if you tire of conversation. I get that.”

“Don't take my words as an insult,” Gustave said. “Or your father’s. He meant them fondly. And Annette . . . always loved puzzles. She’ll be quite happy with you, I think. I’m glad of it.”

“I really didn’t come here to ask for your blessing,” Felix said. “I just wanted to wish you well in your recovery.”

“Well, if you won’t take my blessing, then take my gratitude,” Gustave said. “I was wrong, to think you would betray your kingdom. Your father would have been proud of who you’ve become.”

“It’s possible,” Felix said, stepping back towards the door. “He was also strange, in his own way. One thing we had in common.”

He left unsure whether the conversation had gone well or not, but fully prepared to lie and say it was a success if Ingrid ever got around to asking him about it. Annette and her mother were waiting for him outside the door, closely examining an embroidered scene of the Maiden of Wind frolicking in a field somewhere.

“That took longer than I thought!” Annette said brightly, taking Felix’s hand.

“Always so impatient, Annette,” Fantine said fondly, leaning in to get a closer look at the stitching on a handmaiden’s skirt.

“I want to show Felix our room!” Annette sang. She beamed up at Felix. “It has a fireplace; you’ll love it.”

“I can’t wait,” said Felix, who had never up to this point had any feelings about fireplaces, in rooms or otherwise.  
  
Annette was already pulling him down the corridor as Fantine walked back towards the door to Gustave’s room. She paused at the door and looked over her shoulder. “Felix, dear!” she called out. “Make sure you get some rest this week. We were all so worried for both of you these past few days.”

“Don’t worry, Lady Dominic,” Felix called back. “I wouldn’t let one minor near-death experience slow me down.”

Annette held his hand tighter as they disappeared around the corner, and he didn’t bother to ask whether it was eagerness or concern

***

The restoration of Fhirdiad, and of a unified Faerghus, would be a slow, arduous process. Even as travelers and merchants began to creep back into the city, even as they cleared away the rubble left by Cornelia’s monsters, even as Dimitri spoke more confidently in morning councils, Felix knew that the bulk of their work lay ahead of them, not behind. It was work that he did not know how to do, work of words and thought, not weapons and action.

He had his whole life to learn how to do it, he supposed. It would probably take that long.

But it was also short-sighted to act as if Faerghus was wholly safe, as if the work of the war was done simply because they had claimed their capital. Dimitri received daily news from the front lines of the battle against the Empire, and the Empire fought on with all the ferocity of a cornered enemy. Felix was unsurprised when the announcement came that they would march to Garreg Mach, and to Arianrhod soon after. In a way, he was relieved.

At long last, he could fulfill his promise to his company, to his wife, to himself. Annette would see the halls of Garreg Mach once more.

The evening before they left Fhirdiad, Felix found Annette on a western balcony. In the last few days it had become a favorite spot of theirs, due to its proximity to her family’s quarters, and for the way it overlooked the grounds, and because, though far off, the balcony faced Dominic. Felix was unsurprised to see her standing there that evening, leaning against the balcony looking down at row upon row of her favorite purple flowers.

Felix slid the doors closed behind him and walked up to Annette, placing a hand on her back out of equal parts fondness and habit. Annette looked up at him and gave him a small, wistful smile.

“They’re looking for you in the main hall,” he said, thinking of the flurry of questions about her whereabouts he’d fielded before making his way to the balcony. “Mercedes in particular is worried you’ll miss dinner again.”

“I promised her I’d attend – I think Claude is hoping to make our last night in Fhirdiad something of a celebration,” Annette said with a laugh.

Felix rolled his eyes. “As if we’re not all headed to the same place. He just wants an excuse to drink wine and sing war songs.”

“Maybe so,” Annette agreed, a little too easily, usually one to defend both song and celebration. Felix shot her a careful look. She looked out stoically across the western gardens of the castle, her face unreadable. She seemed in no more of hurry to leave than before he’d arrived.

“Something’s bothering you,” Felix said. It was, to him, less of a guess and more of a logical conclusion. “What’s wrong? Are you worried about your father?”

Annette laughed at this, slightly, leaning against him. “No, for once I’m _not_ worried about Father,” she said with a sigh. “I’m sure he’d prefer to be on the front lines, but this is where Dimitri needs him, and that will help him as he heals, I think. Also . . .” she trailed off, hesitancy in her voice.

“You’re allowed to want this,” Felix said, thinking of Fantine and Gilbert and all the things recovery might mean for Annette and her family and the Kingdom in the coming months. “You’ve wanted this for a long time.”

Annette shrugged, still not willing to say it. That was okay, too. “I guess we’ll see what happens,” she said. She slid her hands around Felix, embracing him as she leaned against him.

“But that wasn’t what you were thinking about?” he prompted. He’s briefly seen the laughter return to Annette’s eyes in the past week. He was fairly sure it was his life’s purpose to make sure it stayed there.

Annette shook her head, leaning against his chest. “No,” she said softly. “It wasn’t.”

“Then?” Felix asked.

Annette sighed and stepped away from him, leaning back on the balcony again, looking out over the horizon.

“I’ve just been thinking . . . what if I hadn’t gone? We didn’t need Crusher. We never needed Crusher. At the end of the day, Dimitri is king and we’re turned towards the Empire and I’ve caused nothing but heartache and peril,” she said, her words starting slow and then tumbling out, one after another, as if she couldn’t stop them once she’d started.

“Don’t talk like that,” Felix said. He started to reach towards her, then pulled away, unsure what she needed. She’d stepped back, after all. He settled for leaning on the balcony next to her, mimicking her movements. “We survived. We’re here. You’re here.”

“You got hurt because of me,” Annette said, her voice quivering. “My family was almost torn apart. Maybe it has been, in the long run. Maybe, if I hadn’t gone, we would have claimed Fhirdiad faster, saved lives along the way, ended the war sooner –”

“None of that is your fault, Annette,” Felix argued. “You couldn’t have known, when you left for Dominic, what was going to happen.”

“I just worry that I'm – I’m so selfish, Felix,” Annette said, finally looking at him. “Even to be this happy, now, feels selfish.”

She was happy. Just hearing it helped, even if there were tears in her eyes. At any rate, it gave Felix the courage to reach out his hand and cover hers. Annette looked at him, still a bit surprised. Felix didn’t blame her – everything about them was still a bit surprising.

“You – you shouldn’t berate yourself for believing that others are good. For doing what you can to help. For caring. That’s only been a good thing, in the end,” he said softly. “Those are the things I’ve always admired most about you. You don’t have to apologize for the things that make you –” Felix swallowed hard, suddenly realizing how stupid this whole speech probably sounded. “– that make you wonderful,” he finished, feeling like a complete fool, too smitten and desperate even now to say anything of any sense.

There was a moment of silence while Annette blinked at him, and Felix wondered if he should just leave to let her be with her thoughts, which were probably better thoughts than his. Then Annette threw herself forward, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and pulling him into a hug that briefly threw him off balance in its sudden intensity.

“I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost you,” she mumbled into his chest. “If anything had happened to you because of me – I couldn’t take it, Felix.”

“Well, I’ve got bad news about that,” Felix murmured, wrapping one hand around her waist to pull her closer and threading his fingers through her hair. “Everything I do now is because of you, Annie. If there’s anything you leaving for Dominic caused, it’s that.”

Annette leaned back, searching his face suspiciously, still on the lookout for a reason to accuse him of villainy.

Her eventual smile was slow and sweet and worth the last two months in and of itself. “I can live with that, I suppose,” she said finally. She reached up to brush his hair out of his eyes as he looked down at her. “If you insist,” she added.

Felix leaned down to kiss Annette and felt her smile against him. To the west, the sun slowly dipped below the horizon, but it felt for all the world like a new day was dawning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh wow dang hi guys, we did it! I’m . . . strangely emotional right now! This feels very weird!
> 
> There’s a ton of dialogue in the game about how Dimitri’s coronation isn’t until after the war, but like . . . I don’t know! Somebody needs to lead this kingdom! So he’s king now. No further questions. Maybe Claude talked him into it. (I’m also not sure what the process for becoming a Duke is but Felix really streamlined that whole deal at the beginning. Listen, the country’s in chaos. People seizing power left and right. They can figure it out once the war ends, I guess.)
> 
> There’s still an epilogue, which I’ll post sometime in December, I think. (Edit: Actually, it might be January. Sorry! I'm a capricious and mercurial being!) It won’t be terribly long but it will be very cute! So. Tune in for that. I’ll probably have more thoughts then. Right now I’m just kind of waving my hands around and screaming; which isn’t very engaging or dignified! 
> 
> Anyways, wishing everyone a safe and not-too-lonely holiday season, which was not a sentence I thought I’d type for _many_ reasons when I first started this project. (It took a year to write! It’s so long!!! What is happening!) Take care of yourself and your loved ones and your community. And thanks for keeping this lil fic in your heart, this year. It’s meant a lot to write it and it’s meant a lot to have you read it.
> 
> Hugs and kisses and happy holidays! See you at the epilogue.


	25. Annette and Felix Go Home

_Two months later._

The Duke and Duchess of Fraldarius arrived in Dominic shortly after lunchtime. They were arguing.

“It’s a perfectly acceptable number of cakes to have at a once-in-a-lifetime event,” Annette Fraldarius informed her husband as the gates opened for them and they rode their horses inside to the main courtyard. “And I want to invite Lysithea von Ordelia, and she might eat an entire cake herself.”

“Twice-in-a-lifetime,” Felix muttered under his breath, but the love of his life either did not hear him or did not deign to reply. “I don’t think there even are seven kinds of cake,” he said, more clearly, as he dismounted from his horse and passed the reins to a waiting stablehand. “I couldn’t name more than three.”

“That’s positively monstrous and you’ve lived your life in squalor,” Annette told him. “Chocolate, vanilla, chiffon –” she paused as Felix helped her down from the horse – “Pound cake, beet cake –”

“I’m sorry, _beet_ cake?” Felix said. He was fairly sure she made that one up.

“You don’t taste the beets; it tastes like chocolate,” Annette explained. “But it turns out this most delightful red color.”

“That’s just chocolate twice, then,” Felix countered, and he expected Annette to argue back, but she was strangely silent. He glanced over at her and she was looking up at the doors of her family’s home, her mouth drawn in a grim line. She had a white-knuckled grip on Felix’s arm, and as the stablehands led their horses away Felix understood some of her trepidation.

“Hey, it’ll be okay,” Felix said, maybe to himself, but mostly to Annette. “This is the end of negotiations, not the beginning. And if anyone tries anything, they’ll have me to deal with.”

“If anyone tries anything, they’ll have _me_ to deal with,” Annette corrected him. “This gremory certificate isn’t just for show, you know.”

It had been a busy two months for all of them, not just overzealous scholars. Following the victory at Fhirdiad, the tides of war had slowly but surely turned in the Kingdom’s favor. This hadn’t made the subsequent battles easy, but as fortress after fortress on the border fell, the Kingdom troops pushed more confidently into Empire territory. Enbarr was within sight.

The larger fight, sometimes, seemed to be off the battlefield. Felix was quickly learning that his father had spent hours in his office for reasons more complicated than neglecting training or avoiding his son. A unified Faerghus meant that titles were no longer ceremonial – even Dimitri was learning to be more than an army figurehead, although Felix received his share of Annette elbows to his ribs whenever he expressed amazement that the boar could remember how to spell, let alone write an entire letter to the Alliance council.

But if Claude von Riegan’s influence helped to unify the Alliance behind Faerghus, and Felix found Sylvain to be particularly talented at helping him communicate with the northern territories, the true diplomatic victory of the past several weeks had been the swift fealty pledged by the western territory, a diplomatic campaign spearheaded by the newly married Duchess of Fraldarius. Felix read letters over Annette’s shoulder or stole them off her desk to study, but he couldn’t quite figure out what mix of pleasantries, politics, and authority Annette managed to bring together to convince half the territories in Faerghus to answer her beck and call. Annette insisted it was a simple matter of finally having a lawful king on the throne, Dimitri insisted he’d be lost without Annette and Felix, and Faerghus slowly stitched itself back together.

So it wasn’t actually a matter of walking up to the Dominic estate and demanding what they wanted. Annette and Felix were both fairly disillusioned with that strategy, as a whole. But even after weeks of letters and negotiations and promises, Annette couldn’t help but feel trepidation as she stared up at her former home. It was hard not to remember what had happened the last time she tried to negotiate with her uncle.

Felix’s hand in hers helped. It usually did.

The footmen were quiet as they led the couple into the large meeting room, skipping over the formalities of a greeting in the main hall. Annette spotted Lissa lurking in a corner of the foyer, watching anxiously from behind a potted plant. She winked at her as they walked by, and the girl beamed at her so hard in return that she almost dropped her feather duster.

Baron Dominic sat at the end of the long central table as they entered the room, surrounded by his requisite stack of files and letters. He took a moment before looking up when the door opened, and Annette recognized the pause as a kind of practiced deliberation.

“Annette,” he greeted her, standing up as she walked across the room.

“Uncle,” she agreed pleasantly.

“Felix,” he added, turning his head slightly to her right.

“ . . . Gérald,” Felix said after a brief pause, evidently deciding titles either familial or formal were incorrect for the situation.

There was a pause as they tried to silently agree who should speak next.

“I’ve been heartened to read of the Kingdom’s recent successes,” Baron Dominic finally said, gesturing vaguely to his stacks of papers. “Would that I could be of more service.”

“The western territories are in a precarious position, Uncle, the king understands that,” Annette said, and her smile wasn’t entirely performative. “What you’re doing today more than demonstrates your commitment to the Kingdom.”

“It’s a start, at least,” Felix muttered. Before Annette could properly glare at him, he asked in a slightly louder voice. “I trust Dominic has had little trouble from Imperial troops this past month?”

“Cornelia’s threats have died with her, I’m happy to report,” Gérald said. “And the troops the Kingdom has provided have been sufficient for keeping our southern border safe – not to mention addressing the increase in bandit activity.” For a moment, a faint, queer expression crossed his face, and it took Felix a moment to recognize it as amusement. “You did provide troops from Fraldarius, in the end,” he said, almost to himself. “That ended up being true.”

Annette cleared her throat loudly, drawing the conversation away from reminiscing.

“Uncle,” she began, drawing herself up to full height, which Felix sometimes felt was a full two inches taller in the past months, although it was probably an optical illusion. “We have further travel this afternoon, and I am sure you have many matters to attend to, yourself. You know what I’m here for.” She held out her hand and smiled, slightly.

“Yes,” Baron Dominic said gravely. He reached to the side and held up Crusher, where it had been resting on the table. “After all this, no one can argue you’ve earned the right to wield the Relic of Dominic.”

He gave a slight bow as he presented it to her, and to reach someone as short as Annette, that slight bow became quite pronounced, indeed. Felix took a step back as Annette took it and weighed it in her hands. The energy coming off Relics always took his breath away. It sometimes seemed too powerful to contain, which was why the edges of the hammer seemed to move when he wasn’t looking too closely.

“Oh. Right.” Annette stared at Crusher and wrinkled her nose, then turned to Felix. “Felix, love, can you hold this for me for a moment?” She handed him Crusher, and turned back to her uncle. “And the key to my room?”

Felix stumbled as Annette dropped Crusher into his hands. It weighed at least double what it looked, and it looked like it weighed as much as Annette.

Baron Dominic had the grace to pretend Felix wasn’t stumbling across his meeting room floor, but he still cast a bemused glance at his niece. “Here’s the key, Annette,” he said with a sigh. “I believe Lissa is waiting at the door to escort you. She wants your opinions on where to hang your winter dresses.”

“Ah! Thank you, Uncle,” Annette said cheerfully. She turned and waved wildly across the room. “Lissa! I swear, have you grown taller?” she sang out as she flounced towards the exit, leaving her uncle and her husband in her wake.

Felix had, by this point, mostly regained his balance.

“How is she supposed to swing this thing,” he muttered, awkwardly slinging it over his shoulder to try to counteract some of the weight.

“The Dominic crest helps, I believe,” Gérald said, looking after Annette as she disappeared out the door. “It might be a bit heavy for you, though.”

“She hardly needs another way to cause damage,” Felix said, but Gérald didn’t seem to hear him, staring thoughtfully as the door swung shut behind Annette.

“One thing I’ve wondered,” he said, looking at the door rather than Felix. “Were you planning to marry her when you showed up? Even now, I feel like I can’t quite tell when you were lying and when you were telling the truth.”

Felix opened his mouth to tell Gérald to mind his own business, and also not to be ridiculous, but he closed it without saying anything. Two months later and he also wasn’t sure when he had been lying and when he had been telling the truth. At least, about most things.

“I just wanted Annette to be safe,” he said, slowly. “Things got complicated from there.” 

“I guess . . . well, that does make sense,” Baron Dominic said with a gruff nod. “I might have been quicker to figure out your plan if you hadn’t looked so lovesick whenever she was around, you know.” He turned back to his desk and his papers, and took a seat without looking back at Felix. “Don’t let her leave without saying goodbye,” he mumbled as he picked up a letter that he had already opened.

Lissa was in the middle of a very important explanation when Felix wandered into Annette’s room after them. Annette kneeled by her oversized trunk, abandoned when they had fled Dominic. She was only half listening.

“We’re pretty sure a _horse_ trampled on this one so we had to repair the sleeves but we didn’t have the right fabric, so it’s short sleeved now,” Lissa explained, holding a dress up for Annette to inspect. “We managed to get the mud stains out, though – also from the horse trampling. And the mud.”

“It’s beautiful, Lissa, thank you,” Annette said, glancing up at the dress long enough to see either the sleeves or the mud or the lack of both. “It can go to the pile to send along to Fraldarius – ah! Here it is!”

Triumphantly, she held the stack of papers out for Lissa to see. Felix wrinkled his nose as he walked into the room. He set Crusher against the nearby dresser, unsure what else to do with it.

“You usually keep your notes neater,” he remarked, peering down at the papers in her hand as he walked up behind her.

Annette looked up in surprise – Felix still had an unfortunate habit of sneaking up on her – and beamed up at him. “They look _terrible_ , don’t they?” she asked, waving the papers in his face for inspection, as well. “I doubt I can even read half of them!”

Felix took the stack of papers with one hand and helped Annette to her feet with the other. He squinted at the top sheet of paper, which was streaked with mud stains and crinkled several times over. It appeared to be a request for a banana bread recipe, interspersed with several effusive passages about dress shopping. To Mercedes, then.

“I can’t believe you came all the way to Dominic just to pick up some letters,” Felix said, flipping through them. The next letter was evidently to Dedue, and seemed to be entirely a recounting of all the meals Annette remembered eating with him. “You could’ve just had them sent to Fraldarius with the rest of your things.”

“I don’t want to do that, I want to deliver them,” Annette protested, leaning against Felix and looking at the next letter, which a full third completely torn away but seemed to be offering Ingrid makeup tips that may or may not have been solicited. “Who knows how long we’ll all be together like this?”

“Mm,” Felix agreed, his voice stoic but his hand tightening around Annette’s waist, even though he knew she wasn’t talking about leaving him at the war’s end.

“And besides, I did have to get Crusher,” Annette reminded him. She peered around Felix, suddenly realizing he wasn’t holding it. “Which you just leaned up against my dresser! Felix!”

Felix shrugged guiltily. “It’s heavy.”

“It’s a family heirloom!” Annette countered. Wiggling out of Felix’s grasp, she walked over to the doorway and lifted the hammer onto one shoulder, striking a pose that Felix vaguely recognized from when she managed a particularly difficult spell in battle. “How do I look?” she asked with a giggle.

Felix’s expression didn’t change all that much, but Annette had long learned to read his almost-smiles, which were practically all-out grins, for Felix. She grinned back.

“If we weren’t already married I’d propose on the spot,” Felix said. He actually smiled, now.

*

Baron Dominic made the courteous and requisite offers to host them for tea, for dinner, for the night, and Annette suspected he wasn’t doing it out of pure politeness. But Annette had been very clear in her negotiation letters that they would stop in Dominic to retrieve Crusher, not to stay. Even after a few hours on the estate grounds, she was beginning to remember that it had been a prison, even if it had been a home before that.

She hoped it would go back to feeling like a former home someday, but for now, she and Felix would press onward to Garreg Mach.

Annette fiddled with the straps on her horse’s saddle, trying to make sure Crusher was properly strapped into place. It would be just like her to retrieve her family relic for the good of the kingdom and then immediately drop it in transit, she thought glumly.

“That strap is supposed to go around the handle, not behind it.”

Annette looked up at the barely-familiar voice, and then beamed when she recognized the guard, sullen and resigned. He bossily shooed her away to attend to Crusher.

“Hello, there!” Annette said brightly. “Did they take you off dungeon duty?”

The guard shrugged, not looking at her. “There’s no one left in the dungeon,” he said flatly. “And I’d had enough of guard duty, anyway. I switched over to front-line protection of some of the local villages. Seemed safer. Not one bandit has thrown me across a battlefield yet, so it’s an improvement so far.”

Annette was pretty sure he was teasing her, but she winced anyway. “Felix felt really bad about that, you know,” she said. “It wasn’t personal. We were improvising a lot.”

The guard gave the straps a final, satisfied tug and turned to Annette with a skeptical look. “Did he tell you he felt bad, or are you just improvising right now?” he asked.

“Ummmm,” Annette said, looking around for Felix to rescue her.

The guard laughed; it was a pleasant sound. “You know, I think I just might miss you, Miss Annette Dominic,” he said with half a smile.

“You could always come try guard duty at Fraldarius,” Annette suggested. ”If you ever get bored.”

His smile widened. “I’m not going to miss you that much,” he said. “You two watch out for each other.” And with a salute that was almost assuredly sarcastic, he was gone.

“Do you need help with Crusher?” Felix asked, wandering over to the spot that the guard left vacant. He was absently flipping through Annette’s letters still, and barely looked up as he walked over to her.

Annette snorted. “You’re a little late for that, dear,” she said. She frowned. “Why are you still reading those? That’s private correspondence, you know.”

“Don’t worry, I’m just reading the ones addressed to me,” Felix said. He held up a letter that had a distinct hoofprint on it and squinted at it. “Dear Felix,” he read. “I’ve been thinking a lot about our conversation in the greenhouse and I have some important follow up questions that I think would be very clarifying –”

“Stop! Stop reading that!” Annette exclaimed. She reached to grab the letter but Felix raised it over his head. “I was a different person then; those don’t count anymore.”

“You thought I was your captive. . . platonically?” Felix said, his face scrunching up in confusion. Annette grabbed at the letter and Felix raised it higher, sliding his arm around her waist as she flailed her arms.

“I thought a lot of things! Give me that letter back,” Annette demanded. She was sure her face was completely red at this point, and Felix’s hand on her back only seemed to make her more flustered, even now.

“Hold on, I’m just getting to the good part,” Felix said, squinting into the sunlight as he held the letter above his head. “‘If ‘captive’ did imply . . . other things . . . I feel further discussion on this issue . . . is warranted?’” He switched to squinting down at Annette. “Goddess, Annie, were you telling me you liked me or negotiating an international peace treaty?”

“Felix Fraldarius! Give me that letter back this instant,” Annette said, leaning further into him and switching to waving just one hand above her as the other grabbed his shirt for balance.

Felix smirked down at her. “Or what?” he asked.

“Or – or I’ll – or –” Annette stumbled. Then, scowling in determination, she grabbed Felix’s collar and pulled him into an annoyed, sincere, hasty kiss. Felix had a moment, before his thoughts went more or less blank, to realize that as fun as it was to tease Annette, he didn’t really need to read her letters from months ago. Not when she was bright and warm against him, like sunshine, like daylight.

Which was probably good for him, because the moment he leaned wrapped his arms around her to lean into the kiss more fully, Annette grabbed the letters from him with a victorious shriek.

“I knew what you were trying to do,” he mumbled grumpily as Annette pulled away.

“It still worked, villain,” she said with a smile. She folded the letters up and put them in her saddlebag, giving her horse a satisfied pat, as if he had been in on the plan with her.

“If I agree to having eight cakes at our post-war wedding reception, will you let me read the letters?” Felix asked. He held out a hand and helped Annette up onto her horse. His hands lingered on hers as she settled into place, and she smiled down at him, and he felt sunshine all over again.

“Absolutely not,” she sang. “But I’m glad to know that eight cakes are a potential option.”

Felix rolled his eyes as he mounted his own horse, but his heart wasn’t in it.

It was only then that Felix spotted Gérald waiting in the doorway of the entry hall, looking almost hesitant as Annette and Felix prepared to leave. He gave Felix a curt nod, and Felix returned it. It felt, if not friendly, at least understanding. Felix turned to Annette, who was fiddling with her grip on the reins with a slight frown.

“I think your uncle wants to say goodbye,” he said. “I’ll wait for you by the gate.”

Annette turned her horse towards her uncle as Felix rode away. She gave him a small smile as he walked up to her. Gérald did not return it.

“You’re off, then,” he grumbled, not quite looking at her.

“We are!” Annette said, trying to keep her voice cheerful. “We’ll stay at an inn tonight, but the plan is to be in Garreg Mach by tomorrow afternoon.

“Hm,” Baron Dominic agreed. “Make sure you choose a reputable inn. And don’t leave Crusher in the stables.”

He fiddled with the bindings on Crusher and, evidently finding no flaw, looked up at Annette.

“I suppose the Kingdom army will be grateful to have Dominic’s strength going forward,” he said gruffly, casting a suspicious glance over Annette’s shoulder and towards Felix.

Annette smiled down and patted his hand, which still rested on her horse. “The relics will be invaluable to our final campaign, Uncle,” she assured him. “It could very well be that Crusher will help us win the war.”

“Annette, I –” Baron Dominic said, then cut himself off with an awkward cough. He patted her horse firmly. “Bring it back unharmed,” he grumbled, stepping back from the horse.

“I will, Uncle,” Annette promised. “Farewell.”

Annette and Felix rode in comfortable silence for a long while after they left the grounds of the Dominic estate. It was a pleasant day for a ride – they were through the hottest part of summer, and fall hinted on the horizon, soft breezes blowing through the leaves as they made their way south.

It was Felix, surprisingly, who broke the silence.

“I saw you wrote to Dedue about a spice cake,” he said casually, casting a sly glance at Annette as they rode along.

She nodded. “He made it for Ashe’s birthday, at the academy,” she said. “And Ashe made it for him, after his return. I’d forgotten how good it was.”

“You made it sound good,” Felix agreed. “I’d probably try a bite, if we have it at the reception.”

Annette giggled. “We’re up to five, then,” she said cheerfully. “Spice, chocolate, vanilla, pound cake . . . um . . .”

“That’s only four,” Felix reminded her unhelpfully.

“I know that!” Annette said, her ears tinting pink. “You’re distracting me by being sweet. Stop it.”

Felix blushed as hard at Annette’s sincerity as she did from his gentle teasing, and he hoped she would be too busy listing cake flavors to notice. She did get lost in thought, getting up to six flavors total despite his attempts to derail her, but she focused on her surroundings surprisingly quickly as they approached a familiar crossroads.

“This is where we met up with Dimitri and Mercie and everyone, isn’t it?” Annette asked, looking around. The sunlight cast a familiar shade on the road, and she could practically see their silhouettes and feel the relief that had uncoiled around her heart as Felix had helped her from the carriage. “And where you proposed – well, sort of proposed? Re-proposed? Where you gave me this,” she said, waving her hand in a gesture that almost felt careless, compared to how her heart dropped to see the flash of gemstone on her finger, even now.

“I guess it is,” Felix said, looking up at the western hill. He drew his horse to a halt and stared at the lone oak tree resting at the top of the hill, hints of fire already appearing on its leaves. “I can’t decide if it feels like we were here a lifetime ago or yesterday.”

“Do you remember, the first time we were here, asking if I wanted to . . . leave? To just leave it all behind?” Annette asked. “I think about that a lot.”

Felix nodded. “I do,” he replied. Much of his month in Dominic had blurred, but some moments, some flashes of desperation or joy or despair, were burned into his memory as clearly as a song.

“Where did you want to go?” Annette pressed. “I’ve often wondered. There was a moment when I wanted to say yes, and not look back, to just take your hand and leave it all behind and –”

She cut off as Felix _did_ take her hand, gently, carefully, running his thumb across her knuckles rather than looking into her eyes.

“I would have gone anywhere you wanted to go,” he said, and even if they hadn’t been alone, he spoke so low that only she could hear. “Anywhere at all. But it was you – it was always you – so in the end there was only one place we could go.”

Annette caught his hand, stilling his fingers. “You mean back to Dominic? Back to my family?” she asked.

Felix shook his head, slightly. “I mean wherever you had to go to make the world safer, and better, and more whole,” he said. “That’s always been what guides you. What can I do but follow?”

Annette smiled – to herself, at Felix, for the whole world if it cared to look. She gave Felix’s hand a final squeeze, and grabbed the reins of her horse once again.

“Well, then,” she said, gesturing down the southern path. “Shall we go find that better world?”

The world seemed cast in fire and gold as they left Dominic behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually never use Crusher, but I’m also one of those video game weirdos who insists on conserving resources forever so it’s endgame and I have like 900000 umbral steel and I’m still like “no we can only use relics in an e m e r g e n c y.”
> 
> As always, it’s about the aesthetic here on A-O-3 dot com, not about actual ludonarrative coherence.
> 
> Wow okay we’re at the end of the tour! That’s wild. Umm, if you’ve made it this far, thank you for sticking it out until the end? Unless you skipped ahead for some reason, in which case, go back and read the earlier stuff. But yeah! This thing is so long, and got so out of control, and whether you binged it over a weekend or have been painstakingly reading update by update, it means a lot to me that you’re still here, so thank you!
> 
> It’s definitely been a strange and isolating year and I feel like writing gets a rep for being a strange and isolating hobby, so thank you also to everyone who made this project feel like it was part of a community, not just me typing into the void in a world that feels like 93% void right now. Thank you to all the people who left comments, for all your theories and keyboard smashes and, like, remarkably complex literary analysis? Thank you to everyone I ever threw an incomplete chapter and begged for feedback for taking the time to give impressions and advice or just live-text me your reading experience. Thanks to everyone who sent along fanart of Felix getting threatened with bodily harm, and also the fanart of all the softer scenes, with flowers and sunsets instead of knives. I love them all equally. Y’all are a wildly talented bunch and like I said, seeing other people interact with and interpret and recreate the fic over the course of the last year just really made it seem like I was part of something larger than a Microsoft Word document and my own extremely smooth brain.
> 
> Kind of a bittersweet moment for me! I’m glad to feel like this is a complete project but also, I will miss it! I will console myself by reading all y’all’s future stuff, I guess! I can’t wait to see what the Netteflix community pulls off this year. Love and hugs and gratitude to you all. 
> 
> I think the guard is probably named Chrom.
> 
> xoxo,  
> Rose


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